FINAL FANTASY VIII ANALYSIS ON ULTIMECIA AND TIME Version 7.0 By: Sir Bahamut -- Real name: Kristian J. Strømmen TheOnionKnight -- Real name: N/A Squall_of_SeeD -- Real name: Glenn Morrow Sections: I. General FAQ Information ~ Purpose of the FAQ ~ About the Authors ~ Version History ~ Copyright Info II. The Nature of Time and Time Compression in FF8. ~ The Line of Time ~ Interrogating Ellone ~ Changing the Past ~ The Loop ~ Sorceress Powers + The Time Loop ~ "That ever elusive time kompression" ~ The PLOT thickens... ~ Conclusion ~ Additional Notes/Frequently Asked Questions III. Ultimecia. ~ Preface. ~ The Rinoa = Ultimecia theory. ~ An Ultimecian Analysis - The Unjust Persecution IV. Additional Information ~ Ultimania Information ~ Miscallaneous In-Game Information ~ Tutorial Information ~ Squalls Terminal Information ~ Laguna and Squall? ~ "The Plot Twist" IV. Credits. ======================================= -Section I: General FAQ Information- ======================================= ~Purpose of the FAQ~ This FAQ will provide as indepth and varied explanations and insights into two of the most frequently debated bits of of the game, the nature of time in FF8, and the mystery of Ultimecia. These two topics, especially the latter, pop up so frequently on the forums here(and everywhere else for that matter) that I and some others decided to compile what we knew after having participated in discussions on both subjects for several years. You might have noticed that this site already has a FF8 Plot FAQ, addressing some of the same issues as this FAQ does. However, these authors fealt it was quite lacking in the issues of time and Ultimecia, so we sought to try and get the content of this FAQ put into the other Plot FAQ. Unfortunately, this never worked out, so in the end, we were able to get our own FAQ posted. We hope you enjoy it! PS: For those of you who didn't take the hint from the title of the FAQ; there WILL be massive spoilers on a regular basis! ------ About the Authors: Everything in this FAQ was written by Sir Bahamut, unless directly specified otherwise. However, we have all contributed into all of this FAQ, so despite me(Sir Bahamut) having physically written most of it, it's more like a compilation of all our discussions on the various subjects covered within. What I'm trying to say is that the credit belongs equally to all three authors! Contacting Sir Bahamut: E-Mail: kristianstrommen@c2i.net MSN Messenger: familystrommen922@hotmail.com Contacting TheOnionKnight: nonarticulate@hotmail.com Contacting SquallOfSeeD: glenn.morrow@gmail.com Please contact Sir Bahamut for questions on the FAQ as a whole. For questions/comments on the various theories inside, contact whoever wrote the bit in question. If unsure who to send to, send it to Sir Bahamut. E-MAIL POLICY: Make subject "FF8 Plot FAQ" or something similar. No unnecessary attachments. If you do give me information, include the name you wish to be referred by in the credits section. No non-constructive criticism (your guide sucks etc.). Don't send the same message many times. Remember, we may not be able to reply immediately, so have patience! If however, it's been more than a week, make a topic on the FF8 Message board at GameFAQs asking for whoever it is you can't reach (for instance, you might make a topic titled "Attn: Sir Bahamut"). ------ Version History: 1.0: First complete version (some time in 2004). 1.5: Updated the R=U section quite a bit, as well as adding some stuff to the Time/Timeloops section. 3.0: Completely rewrote the entire section on Time after new breakthroughs on practically all fields. 4.0: Big update in the R=U section, due to new info from the Ultimania Guide. Also added the "Additional Information" section, for various bits and pieces not necessarily related to Time or Ultimecia. Unless something new and big pops up(unlikely) this will probably be the last major update. 5.0: 1. Oktober 2005 Went through and corrected mistakes coming from the rushed 4.0 update. Added The Dark Legends bit on "The Plot Twist". Generally cleaned up the FAQ, adding a sentence here and there, removing a line now and then. The FAQ seems to be as good as it can get at this point. This will be the last 'cleaning up' I do of this FAQ. Future updates will only come from new theories/info. 6.0: 27. June 2006 In light of the discovery that there existed some unfortunate flaws in the explanation of Time Compression, I took the opportunity to do a bit of cleaning up, clarifying some things and generally trying to make the FAQ more accessible. Unfortunately, the mentioned flaws have not been solved, and will not be solved by these authors. We are all tired of the issue, and all have more important things to deal with in the real world. Perhaps someone will solve the TC problem in the future (if you have done so and are reading this, send us a mail!), but it will not be one of us. The problem is explained in the 'UPDATE (2006)' note under "The PLOT thickens". 7.0(Current Version): 6. July 2006 Typically enough, as soon as I think I've made the last update, I instantly get several mails with new and interesting contributions, this time primarily from one "Yuthura Ban". So had to add some stuff to the "Additional Information" in the Time part, as well as a few bits to the R=U part and the Unjust Persecution section. ------ Copyright information. This game is a copyright Square, but this FAQ is a copyright Sir Bahamut/TheOnionKnight/Squall_Of_SeeD 2006 This is what you may do with this FAQ: 1. You may read it. 2. You may download it to your computer. 3. Send it to others as long as you don't charge them or change the FAQs content, and don't present the author as anyone else but Sir Bahamut TheOnionKnight and Squall_Of_SeeD. This is what you may not do: 1. Sell this guide for profit (unless consented by the author). 2. Steal information without giving the authors all the credit and asking the authors on beforehand. Websites may post this guide if they follow these conditions: 1. The FAQ is not altered in any way. 2. The authors get full credit. 3. You send the author a Mail before posting it, telling me you are going to post it, and include the Web sites address. 4. Do not post it without permission, and don't harass if denied. ===================================== -Section II: The Nature of Time- ===================================== NOTE: Before reading, please understand that all this is based ONLY on what the game tells us, and common sense and logic. Considering the magic, monsters, frequent timetravel etc. it would be a mistake to automatically assume that FF8 physics are identical to real world physics. The authors can after all take some artistic liberations in their own game! Since we furthermore cannot study the FF8 world as real world physicists study our world, we are forced to make this a purely theoretical debate based solely on what the game tells us. Essentially, this means that you'll hear no mention of the theory of general relativity, or quantum mechanics, or any such scientific theory. Instead, we will be starting from scratch, adopting the simplest views and explanations possible, with the only requirement being that they are logically coherent and explain what we see in the game. ----------------- THE LINE OF TIME ----------------- When we think of time, we tend to think of a series of events 'moving' from the past to the future, where we are always in the 'present' state. In other words, time 'flows', and we are always living in 'the present'. The question then becomes: does the past exist anywhere but in our mind, and does the future exist? Although such questions are still debated in the real world, FF8 presents us a very clear answer to the first question posed, by showing that travelling to the past is possible. We can then conclude that when we move through time, the series of events lying in our past do in fact exist in the same way that our present does. Thus it is that Ellone can send Squall inside Laguna of the past despite those events actually having happened a long time ago, and thus it is that Ultimecia can arrive at the orphanage, several hundreds of years back in time from where she was defeated and pass on her powers to Edea. This introduces the most basic concept of time we have; the line of time. Past<----------------------------------------------|Present Here, the past is merely all events before your 'present' state. For example, this line might represent the events that happened between the point in time where you were born, till your 'present state' of reading this sentence. Such a line could be expanded to show the history of the universe and everything in it. For the purpose of making the authors job easier, this one, absolute, universal line of time will be abbreviated the ULOT(Universal Line Of Time) from now on. Now, for the inquisitive reader, two questions are likely to pop at this point. Firstly, is the line of time finite or infinite, and secondly, is the line of time infinitely divisible. The second question is beyond our range of knowledge, so unless we were somehow able to study the FF8 universe like we can study the real universe, we cannot answer it. Thankfully though, the question does not need to be answered in order to explain what we see in FF8, so the question will not be dealt with in this FAQ. The first question, whether or not the line of time is finite or infinite, is however a question we can answer with a reasonable amount of certainty. However, since the argument behind the answer involves us bringing in Time Compression, you will have to wait a bit to hear the reasoning (for the impatient reader however, we believe that the ULOT must be finite, and hence that the FF8 universe had a beginning at some time in the past like our own universe, and will also come to an end at some point in the future). But what of the future? Does it exist or does it not? --------------------- INTERROGATING ELLONE --------------------- We tend to instinctively believe that the future doesn't exist because we haven't gotten there yet. In other words, although our past may exist, our future doesn't exist until it actually happens. This is certainly the most commonview explanation, and definitely a tempting one, but is such a view on time merely pleasing to the mind? Does time actually have other properties, ones we wouldn't instinctively think of? To answer this question, we must introduce one of the most important statements ever given in the game related to time. The statement is given to us by Ellone in the beginning of disc 3, straight after Laguna and Co defeat the Ruby Dragon: Ellone: "You can't change the past. I just found that out". To briefly summarise Ellones quest, she was trying to change the past in a way that would have Laguna stay with Raine, who was pregnant with Lagunas baby (who turns out to be Squall). All the 'Laguna events' in the game are thus attempts of Ellone to change the past using Squall and Co. However, she finally concludes that it can't be done. Squall later confirms her statement when he has her send him back to the Auditorium, right after the battle with Edea, in an attempt to save Rinoa. The statement clearly has vast implications on any picture of time in FF8. Unfortunately, the statement is not completely unambiguous; she may seem to say it quite factually, but closer consideration shows that it's not a completely closed case. Firstly, there is the fact that Squall and Co never actually seem to try and affect Laguna and Co in any way. Surely, as Ultimecia has shown us, such manipulation of people using Ellones magic is very possible, but while Ultimecia uses this left and right, Squall and Co never do anything other than seemingly give them added power in battle(remember the 'fairies' Laguna and Co speak of, and how they imply battles are a walk in the park when they're around). So can Ellone really know that they couldn't have changed anything even if they tried? Secondly, there is the point that we see two types of timetravelling in the game. Besides Ellones type, we see a different type when Squall and Ultimecia return to the Orphanage in the ending(and similarly when Squall and Co travel to Ultimecias castle from their own time). While Ellones method seems to be some 'time-travelling magic', the time-travelling in the ending seems to be more of an exploitation of time-compression. Whether or not these two types are fundamentally different, or merely two differing-but equally valid-methods of moving in time is a good question indeed, and one that might seem impossible to tell. However, upon closer scrutiny, we can see that the only real difference is that while Ellone sends only your consciousness to the past, time-compression lets the entire you travel through time. Since we see, through the actions of Ultimecia, that the consciousness alone is capable of accomplishing just as much as the body, it is the opinion of this author that the two types of time-travelling we see are equally capable (or INcapable) of changing the past, and should be treated as equals. Then you have to consider things from Squares perspective. After all, they are telling a story, and will frequently use characters in the game to reveal basic facts about FF8(the other way being through the tutorial section). Ellones statement comes at the closure of one of the most important sub-plots of the game, and is even confirmed additionally through Squalls attempt at saving Rinoa, after refusing to believe Ellone. For these authors, assuming the writers put in such a conclusion to such an important part of the game without actually meaning it is simply not feasible. However, the fact that we never actually see any visible attempts at changing the Laguna events, ensures that there will always be room for differing interpretations of Ellones statement. But as will be made apparent as we move on, the last word on whether or not the past can be changed or not has not yet been spoken. --- NOTE: I said that all three authors believe the past cannot be changed, but that is not entirely true; SquallOfSeeD actually believes the opposite. A summary of his own view can be found in the "Additional Notes" section at the end of this bit on time. --- ------------------ CHANGING THE PAST ------------------ --- NOTE: The rest of the section on Time is written from the perspective that Ellones statement is taken as canon. However, I will nevertheless bring up what the opposite implies for any given topic being discussed. --- Ellones statement doesn't mention the future in any way, but if we look deep enough we will recognise that it indirectly implies whether or not the future 'exists' in the same manner we have already established the past as doing. We start by making an initial assumption the future does not exist. Beyond the 'present', nothing is certain, but a choice once made, cannot ever be unmade. But then we know that time-travelling is quite possible. So let's assume that we decide to travel back in time. Let's say we go back to the location of John Lennon's murder and disable the murderer, effectively preventing John Lennon from dying (note that I have for the sake of convenience used real world examples, while I should in fact be using examples from the FF8 plot). As you can see, we have arrived at a logical contradiction; we have changed the past even though changing the past is not possible. Hence we can conclude that the initial assumption must necessarily have been false. But do things really improve if we start by assuming that the future exists? Well, if we look at things from John Lennon's perspective, the event in which you decide to travel back and save him already exists just like his own present state. This effectively means that your travelling to the past isn't in any way changing anything. Things always happened like that; you would have attempted to stop the murderer, but would not have succeeded, and Lennon would have been subsequently shot. When you get the idea, many years later, that you will try and change things, you would naturally be unaware of this, leading you to travel to the past despite the fact that this would merely be fulfilling your 'destiny'. Your presence in the past is immutable. You were always there and were never not there. As you can hopefully see, a past that cannot be changed only works if all time-travelling events of the future exist in the same way as the past and present. In other words, if the past cannot be changed, the future exists, simply because timetravelling occurs in the ULOT of FF8. The next logical step is asking whether or not the future can be changed. Not surprisingly, the answer is that NO, the future is as unchangeable as the past, and the reasoning is very straightforward. Basically, someone situated at the very end of time would find that nothing behind him can be changed at all. This means that no events on the ULOT can be altered. --- NOTE: The astute reader will realise that such reasoning does not work on the very last event of time, since there would be no one in it's future who could recognise that his past can't be changed. However, since assuming that no event on the entire ULOT can be altered except the very last one doesn't make much sense at all, the conclusion still holds. This is furthermore supported by the next paragraph. --- This means that we can modify our ULOT from above into something like this: Birth<------------------------------------------------------------->Death (Birth and Death are naturally meant to represent the beginning and end of time). Of course, this conclusion (that time is completely static and unalterable) is quite obvious if you can first accept that the future exists in the same manner as the past and the present, because this means that the distinction between the past, present and future is merely in our heads. Someone looking at time(ignoring the wild implications of this notion) from the outside would see every event as being 'equal'. Every event could be considered 'present', which means that any event could be considered 'past' or 'future'. To re-emphasise this important notion: if all of time exists 'at once', so to speak, the concepts of past, present and future are reduced to nothing but constructs of the mind. You will probably realise that this means the ULOT would have been 'created' at once (how the ULOT came into existence is a meaningless question given the framework of the game, but it isn't at all relevant to the discussion at hand anyway) for obvious reasons; if time rather evolved from a given initial event, the future could not exist until it happened, which contradicts the conclusions previously made. But what about those who believe that Ellone was not correct? What do they believe? Although we have just established that if the past cannot be changed, all of time exists 'at once' and was created 'at once', you might take it for granted that if the past CAN be changed, all of time does NOT exist 'at once' and was NOT created 'at once'. Although this is correct, I will none the less spell out why, for the sake of completeness. If we assume the past can be changed, no events involing travelling to the past can exist before they happen. This might sound complicated, but recall the example with John Lennon; if we assume his time as 'present', the future event in which someone decides to travel to the past to save him can't exist yet, because if it had, he would have been saved, which he clearly was not. Relating this to an ingame event, you could consider Ultimecia passing her powers to Edea in the ending; if the past can be changed and we assume Edea in the Orphanage as present, the event in which Ultimecia travels to the past and gives her her powers cannot exist, or else she would have received the powers the first time around, and Ultimecia wouldn't be changing anything. In other words, if the event in which Ultimecia went to the past existed even while we consider Edea in the orphanage as being the 'present', then Edea would have received her powers at that present time. This is a contradiction because it means that when Ultimecia goes back, she wouldn't be changing anything, despite the fact that she very clearly meddles with the past. This in turn means that if the past can be changed, time would not have been created 'at once', but must have evolved from a given starting event without any set future, and the past would only exist after it's happened. To sum up, if the past cannot be changed, all of time exists 'at once' and the notions of past, present and future become redundant. In turn the ULOT would have been 'created' all at once. This theory on time in FF8 is referred to as the 'static time theory'. Now, such a theory might seem to get rid of the notion that time 'flows' from the past to the future, and it does definitely make it harder to define what time actually is. It might seem that in this rigid view of the ULOT, time only flows in the game because we are observing it from the outside, much like the events in a film don't 'flow' until we press Play. This would certainly be a strange conclusion, which we definitely recognise. What these authors suggest is that in the static time theory, time can be considered flowing from every point in time. In other words, any event in your past flows towards the future in the same way that your observed 'present' does, and the same applies for your future. This basically means that the notion of present may be re-introduced, because all events would be considered 'presents'. In this way time can 'flow' the way it appears to do, and the odd idea that time only 'flows' for an observer is gotten rid of. --- NOTE: The matter of the flow of time is as you can see hardly satisfactorily dealt with here, but is brought up again in the "Additional Notes" section, giving an indication of how difficult exactly this point is. --- However, if the past CAN be changed, nothing beyond the present exists, and notions of past, present and future hold. In turn, the ULOT would have started off as a single event, and would have subsequently evolved from this initial point. But which is more plausible? Is there any way to conclusively show either as being the supperior theory? The first thing we must take into consideration is one important aspect of FF8: Fate. The concept of fate is well established in the game, which should be evident to anyone who has played the game. Cid and Edea talk to Squall of his 'destiny' to be a leader and take command over SeeD, Ultimecia speaks of Squall being destined to fight her, and one of the main musical themes of FF8, "Liberi Fatali", referring to the party, means literally "children of destiny". But fate isn't just explicitly talked about, it's excessively used to make seemingly impossible things possible. The prime example here, is naturally the Ragnarok. Squall and Rinoa find the Ragnarok just before they run out of oxygen, but what exactly are the odds of that? Taking into consideration that it would have been orbiting the earth, the chances of them happening to stumble across it at any given moment are ridiculously low. But then again, since fate exists in FF8, they just happen to break these odds. Another good example is the defeat of Ultimecia. In her final form, Ultimecia has seemingly already absorbed all of the sorceress powers and much of time and space, and should by all standards be Godlike. Yet still a group of 17-year olds are able to defeat her! The answer, it seems, is merely fate. They were meant to defeat her, so that's what they did, even if Ultimecia should have easily crushed them. Other similar examples demonstrate how fate is a highly important factor in FF8. But what does this have to do with the behaviour of time? Well, it's quite simple really; if you can alter events; if a choice once made can be unmade, then 'fate' loses its meaning. After all, fate would have it that everything that happens was meant to happen in exactly that manner, and couldn't have happened any other way, but the notion of a changing past would seem to directly contradict this. On the other hand, the static time theory perfectly adopts the concept of fate. In the static time theory, everything happens only one way, and can't happen any other way. Even attempts to change the past would be part of fate, and thus wouldn't change anything. It seems that the static time theory and fate can basically be considered two sides of the same coin. So as you can see, once you accept that the universe of FF8 is one controlled by 'fate'(ignoring the question of what fate actually is), then the static time theory immediately stands out as being 'perfect', while the dynamic time theory appears to directly contradict it. It should be noted that it isn't this straight forward. It is my bias to the static time theory which is getting in the way. As SquallOfSeeD believes, changes made to the past could be fated as well, meaning that the change is part of destiny. Although I personally disagree with this notion, it is a valid view. However, the rest of the main bulk here will be written assuming the static time theory to be true. The implications for the dynamic time theory will however be brought up at various points before an explanation of SquallOfSeeDs dynamic time theory is given in the "Additional Notes" section. But until then, we continue with one big aspect of FF8: ---------- THE LOOP ---------- Anyone who has seen the ending in it's entirety is most likely familiar with the concept of the loop. Basically, the loop comes from the fact that Ultimecia decides to pass on her powers to someone in the past; Edea. Edea, as we all know, passes on her powers to Rinoa. Rinoa is according to Odine the last sorceress of her era, which means(ignoring the theory that Rinoa is Ultimecia) that when Ultimecia, long after the game has ended, becomes a sorceress, it must be Rinoas powers that she inherits. --- NOTE: Although Odine calls Rinoa the only sorceress of her era(after Adel is dead), there are reasons to question his ability to say such a thing. This arises from the fact that in the Tutorial->Information section, we are told that it is unknown how many sorceresses really exist, because many spend their life in hiding, away from the public eye(remember that sorceresses are widely feared due to people like Adel). However, these authors have decided to take Odines word as canon, since he is the source of much else that we assume as canon. --- What this means, is that the powers Ultimecia give away before she dies, end up becoming the very powers she gives away. Ultimecias travelling to the past initiates her rising to power in the first place; she creates a 'loop' in time. Using the picture of the ULOT, we might think of it looking something along these lines: |-------------------| | | Past<------------------A-------------------B----------------->Future Event A here is the event we see in the ending; where Squall and Ultimecia arrive from the future and meet Edea. Event B here is the event in which Ultimecia and Squall travel back through time. --- NOTE: This image of the loop is inherently flawed, because while the time passed between A and B on the principal line (ie. the bottom part) amounts to several hundred years, the amount of time that Ultimecia and Squall use getting to event A from event B (ie. the top bit) is clearly NOT hundreds of years, despite this image implying just that. As we will see later, this way of viewing the loop on the ULOT simply doesn't work anyway, but for the moment you can simply imagine that the distance from A to B when time-travelling is not identical to the distance from A to B in 'real time'. --- Since we have just established that all of time exists 'at once', this loop must have always been part of the ULOT just like any other segment of the line. We might say that the ULOT contains 'bumps', if you will. This effectively implies that Ultimecia sets herself into existence, a startling implication for sure! To demonstrate the dazzling conclusions we are forced to draw, we will turn to a simpler example: Take the term "SeeD"; the official name for the military force educated in the Gardens. Garden and SeeD were founded by Edea and Cid. Now take Squall. Squall knows of the term "SeeD" because he IS one; he was put into the organisation created by Edea and Cid, and knows about its terminology, including the term "SeeD" because of them. Now consider the ending section where Squall arrives at the Orphanage and meets a young Squall and younger Edea. Before Ultimecia arrives, Squall talks to her about "SeeD" and "Garden". Edea seems puzzled at this, as if she has never heard of those things before in her life. Let's assume she hasn't(this assumption is up for debate, but is a good example of the point being made; the actual validity of the assumption is irrelevant). The big question-and the big point-is this: Where did the idea of the term "SeeD" actually come from? To fully demonstrate why this question is important, we'll label the event in which Squall learns of "SeeD" through Edea founding it as event A. Then we'll label the event in which Edea learns of "SeeD" through Squall telling her as event B. That being done, let's make a cause-effect diagram showing whose idea it really was: A--->B--->A--->B--->A--->B--->A--->B--->A------>repeat ad infinitum. The implications are thus that within a timeloop, the notion of cause and effect are effectively destroyed, as evident in A leading to B, leading to A again, as pictured above. Both event A and event B are the causes of the term "SeeD", and both event A and event B are the effects of the causes! If you really took in the idea of the loop on the ULOT completely, this is an obvious conclusion; events A and B would be on the loop in such a way that asking which came first, A or B, is as meaningless as asking which point is the 'starting point' of a circle (to see this for yourself, draw a circle and ask yourself the same question). This idea that the term "SeeD" doesn't have an origin is one common thing that makes people lean to the 'dynamic time theory'. This is because in the 'dynamic time theory', it WOULD have an origin. To understand this, remember what we concluded about the two theories previously. In the 'static time theory', the entire ULOT would have to have been 'created' all at once, while in the 'dynamic time theory', time would have evolved from a given starting point. Then bring in the idea of the loop we have just introduced. We know that since Ultimecia travelled back in time, she must have caused some sort of change. Now, in the 'dynamic time theory' the loop would keep happening over and over again(since time is always evolving, even within the loop, so each time Ultimecia goes back to the past she initiates a new round of the loop), but according to this, there must have been a first loop; a first time in which Ultimecia travels back in time. This first time, she must have been changing something. But what was she changing? All we know for certain is that this 'original time', this 'pre-loop' time would have contained Squall, Rinoa, Cid, Edea etc. etc, even Ultimecia. This 'original time' must have contained events completely unlike the ones we see in the game; in short, no events that are a result of Ultimecia using Junction Machine Ellone to try and find Ellone, because in the original time, Ultimecia would not yet be alive to do all this. (This will be expanded upon in the "Additional Notes" section if you wish to know more of the dynamic time theory). This 'original time' would however contain cause-effect diagrams completely unspoilt by any timeloops, so the term "SeeD" would have had a meaningful origin somewhere within the 'original time'. Of course, since it's anyones guess what actually happened in the 'original time', it is still impossible to answer where "SeeD" really came from. The dynamic time theory does, however, allow one to say that the question does in fact have an answer; it's just that we can't ever know that answer! But what about in the static time theory? What explanation does that theory have for the crazy cause-effect diagrams? Well, the fact of the matter is that such seeming paradoxes are perfectly allowed (and indeed inevitable) within a timeloop such as the one in the game. No matter how strange it might seem, there is no paradox! It is merely an inability to cope with the idea of time being looped. This means that while the two theories hold perfectly valid explanations, the dynamic time theory requires an added element, the original time, to work. Before moving on from the loop (which will be brought back later), one thing must be made clear: the loop of FF8 is not a 'closed', repeating loop! Squall and Co are not 'stuck' in this loop forever and ever. In the static time theory the loop happens once and only once. Basically, we'd see the loop if we stayed with the little Squall we see at the Orphanage in the ending. If we stayed with him, we'd see the events of the game playing out exactly like the last time we see them. The crucial element to note here is that this is effectively the same thing as watching a video, then rewinding it and watching it over again. We wouldn't dream of claiming that the characters of the film are 'stuck' in the loop of you watching it over and over again for obvious reasons. No, they would in theory be living out their lives after the video is finished, completely unrestrained of the fact that we are watching it over and over again(assuming for the sake of the argument that characters in films exist in reality). In the same way, Squall and Co live on their lives as seen in the Garden Party at the ending despite the observed 'loop'! The dynamic time theories implications on this will, as mentioned, be talked about later, as it is slightly more difficult to express in what way changing the past alters the ULOT. However, since being trapped in a loop implies that the trapped person has knowledge of being trapped, and since no such knowledge is ever implied at any point in the game, we take it for granted that the dynamic time theory does not have anyone trapped in the loop either. Each time the loop plays out, it's a new set of Squalls and Rinoa's, who will never have been in the loop before. We will soon move on to Time Compression, and see what implications such a process has on time, but first we will rather briefly bring up the idea of the static time theories in conjunction with the properties of sorceress powers. ----------------------------------- SORCERESS POWERS + THE TIMELOOP ----------------------------------- Scanning Ultimecia in the final battle reveals that she intends to become all-powerful by taking all the sorceress powers through time. This directly implies a basic fact about sorceress powers, namely that they are additive. Sorceress power A + Sorceress Power B > Sorceress Power A/B. The reason this is relevant to the discussion, is that the main part of the loop involves a power transfer. To visualise this, we will make a simple diagram tracing who gets what powers in the game. If you wonder who the "unknown sorceress" is, you must remember that Edea is a sorceress before Ultimecia gives her her powers, but since we are never told anything about this sorceress, we label her thus. |----------------------------------| | | Unknown sorceress--->Edea--->Rinoa--->Unknown Era--->Ultimecia --- NOTE: As you can see, I have not included Adel giving powers to Rinoa here. The reason is that Adels powers are not an essential part of the loop, meaning it would merely complicate the diagram. --- As you can see, since sorceress powers are additive, it would seem that the powers of each sorceress from Edea to Ultimecia increases for each span of the loop! The dynamic time theory allows this to happen, but the static time theory does not. Does this mean that the static time theory is ultimately wrong? The answer is no. This is no more a flaw than the term "SeeD" having no meaningful origin. To see this, we'll look closer into the powers being transferred. Edeas initial powers = A Adels powers = B Ultimecias powers(which include A and B) = C But since we see that Edea gets Ultimecias powers, we could say that A = A + C. Such a 'formula' for Edeas powers works in the dynamic time theory, because that would simply express the fact that Edeas powers increase for each loop. It would of course for this reason be more accurate to write that: A-->A + C-->(A + C) + C--> etc. In other words that A BECOMES A + C, not that it IS A + C. But what about the static time theory? Powers are forbidden from adding up within the loop because that would mean that you can change the past. How do we then account for this seeming paradox? Well, remember the analogy of rewinding the video I used earlier? It applies here too: the events in which the powers transfer happens once, and only once. This means that thinking of the loop as transpiring more than once is as silly as thinking of the events in a video as happening more than once depending on how many times you look at it! We fall into this paradox because we are literally letting our eyes trace around the loop more than once, which creates the illusion that powers must increase each time we come full circle, but as explained above, this is quite flawed and incorrect. The fact is that within the static time theory, any event happens once and only once, which means the power transfers happen once, and only once, meaning asking if the powers 'add up' for each loop is a meaningless question. --- NOTE: There has been some confusion over the meaning of "events happen once and only once in static time". This is only meant to reflect the fact that since time is set in stone, every event merely 'is', and it would be absurd to consider any sequence of events as 'occuring' more than once, even if it is in a loop. The confusion arises from the fact that there does not appear to be a regular 'flow' of time in static time, so we instinctively put it back in again without thinking, thus leading to the contradiction. But if we simply ignore our intuition, and consider only logic, there is actually nothing flawed with the static time theory; the powers don't add up because the loop only 'happens' once (again, consider the video analogy). --- A more thorough take on dynamic time can be found in the Additional Notes section. --------------------------------------- "THAT EVER ELUSIVE TIME KOMPRESSION" --------------------------------------- "A complete mystery. Various states of past, present and future mixed together". That is the jist of what we are told directly in the game(this line coming from the Tutorial->Information section). However, since merely calling it a "mystery" is quite unacceptable to these authors, we will attempt to explain what Time Compression (TC) would entail so as to explain what a fully compressed time would be like, and ultimately make a theory of TC that can explain everything we see in the game with a bare minimum of assumptions. To do that we first have to understand what "compression" actually entails. A quick look in the dictionary reveals that it essentially means the act of pressing something to a more compact state. For instance, were you to take a sheet of paper and crumple it together into a little ball, you might say that you have compressed the sheet of paper. But what does it mean to compress time itself? Well, using the handy picture of the ULOT, we could say that TC would effectively push at it from both sides, thus effectively crumpling it into a small ball. For the sake of simplicity and to create a logical view on TC, these authors(and most tend to agree) assume that TC would effectively compress the entire ULOT into one single event in time. To fully grasp this picture, we turn to the very elegant analogy formulated by TheOnionKnight: Imagine time as literally being a film made up of many slides(remember that we had to ignore the question of whether time is infinitely divisible or not) where each slide shows one 'now' in time. A 'now' slide would then contain a record of everything that happened in the FF8 universe at exactly that moment in time. Watching this film would then be the same as watching everything that happens from the beginning of the universe till it's end. Now imagine that you seperate each individual slide from the film, and stack them all on top of eachother. Shining a light through this stack of slides would be the same as creating an image of all the slides as one. Can you imagine what such an image would look like? Every single event in the entire ULOT all 'happening' at the same time? It certainly makes us realise why it is that no one(except Ultimecia) can exist inside this TC slide! --- NOTE: We know only Ultimecia can live in TC because both Rinoa and Edea tell us. Here is for example Rinoas statement: "There was a sorceress inside me. Ultimecia, a sorceress from the future. She's trying to achieve time compression. She's the only one who would be able to exist in such a world. She, and no other." --- Anyone else would exist only in the sense that each event of their life continues to exist as fragments, but there would be no 'flow' in time; you wouldn't move towards the future from the past. Instead, you'd be in a sense frozen in time, without actually realising it. This is the most commonly accepted view of a fully compressed ULOT, and is the idea we will be utilising in this FAQ. Now that we've established what TC does, we can move on to another fact we are told, namely that Ultimecia has to go the past in order to cast the spell. This piece of information raises some important questions; is the spell limited in some way(and in that case, how?) or is it rather that Ultimecia WANTS to cast it where she does for some reason? Assuming the former as being correct, we are left with some strange facts. Firstly, the issue of why she needs to be in one particular place of time to cast the spell. It might make sense that she'd need to be in the direct center of the ULOT, but since Ultimecia is always moving through time, how is she able to coordinate things so that she casts it at the exact center? Does she perhaps only need an approximate center? She goes into a young Adel when she casts the spell, meaning she was about 50-60 years into the past(from where you defeat Adel), which raises the question of why TC has such a strict conception of what is close enough to the center. Clearly, the idea that she needs to be in the center of time is too full of holes and problems that cannot be answered to be considered viable. Perhaps she needed to be in more than once place on the ULOT in order to activate the spell. Again though, this assumption raises the same amount of questions as the previous suggestion. A final idea many use, is that she needs to be in both the past, present and the future in order to cast it. However, this idea singles out Squalls 'present' as THE present from which past and future is measured from. But since Ultimecias present would by all reasoning be her own present, and not Squalls, this idea is flawed. Basically, what this last paragraph is supposed to show, is that there is simply no way of knowing what way the spell is limited. We are forced to conclude, from a lack of information, that the spell is simply limited in a way we can never hope to know. Based on this, we furthermore assume that Ultimecia only cast it one place in time; the time when Adel was a young girl. But what if it isn't that the spell is limited in any way? What if Ultimecia has some reason for wanting to cast it exactly where she does? While such a reason would be very clarifying, the events in time where she casts the spell are never shown to us in the game. They take place when Adel is young, and we never see such a time. Because of this, we can't hope to know what motive she could have had, so we have to unfortunately draw the same conclusion as before; we cannot ever hope to know why Ultimecia had to be at some specific point in time to cast TC. A sad conclusion for sure, but the lack of information make it an inevitable one. --- NOTE: Although some of the arguments vary, this conclusion is the same in both the static and the dynamic time theory. --- But what actually happens when Ultimecia casts the spell? What happens that lets Squall and Co move to the future? Why do they get exactly where they want to? How do they avoid being compressed? Why does the Ragnarok along with the entire CC Club end up in Ultimecias time as well? All these questions, and other ones not mentioned, are basically different ways of angling the big question: How does TC work? We have established what a fully compressed time would 'look like', but we haven't actually discussed the process of compression itself. Producing a simple theory that can answer all the questions and avoid introducing unanswerable questions will be the goal of this next part of the FAQ, and as we shall see, it is trickier than it sounds. To establish what we are told, here is what Odine tells us when explaining the plan to defeat Ultimecia, followed by Lagunas speech: Dr. Odine: "You vant to go outside!? You vant to fisticuffs!? Ok, we continue ze story! Let's see... There is only one way to defeat Ultimecia. You must kill her in ze future. There iz nothing we can do unless we go to ze future. There is no way to jump to ze future under normal circumstances. But there iz still a way! It iz because Sorceress Ultimecia plans to compress time. Compressing time with magic... Vat good will it do for ze sorceress to compress time? There may be many reasons, but it doesn't matter. Let's just figure out vat Ultimecia iz up to. In order for Ultimecia to exist in this time, she must take over ze body of a sorceress from ze present. But ze machine must have a limit. Ultimecia probably needs to go back further in time to achieve time compression. Only Ellone can take her back further into ze past. Zat iz why she iz desperately seeking her. We must take advantage of Ellone's power. There are 2 sorceresses in our time. Sorceress Rinoa and Sorceress Adel. Of ze two, Adel has not awakened yet. Once regeneration is completed, neither Laguna not I will be safe. Sorceress Adel is probably in ze process of awakening inside of Lunatic Pandora. Ultimecia will want to possess Adel, if Adel wakes up. Zat vill be a horrible event. Adel iz a horrible sorceress. If Adel's consciousness wins over Ultimecia, Adel will first destroy this era. So we must use Sorceress Rinoa to inherit Ultimecia's powers. Zat's all for ze mission briefing. First, go to Lunatic Pandora. Ellone's probably being held captive inside, so rescue her first. Then kill Sorceress Adel before ze awakening process is completed. Now, we're left with Rinoa as ze only sorceress of this era. Then wait for Ultimecia to possess Rinoa. When Ultimecia arrives, it's Ellone's turn. Ellone will send Rinoa back to ze past with Ultimecia. Ellone will have to send Rinoa and Ultimecia inside another sorceress she knows in the past. Edea or Adel... Zat's up to Ellone. Once Ultimecia iz in ze past, she'll use ze time compression magic. We will see some influence here. I don't know vat kind of influence, but once Ellone feels it, she'll cut Rinoa and Ultimecia off from ze past. Rinoa will come back to this world. Ultimecia also goes back to her own world. Vat would be left is ze time compressed world. Past, present future will all get mixed together. You will keep moving through ze time compression toward ze future. Once you're out of ze time compression, zat will be Ultimecia's world. It's all up to you after zat." Later, Laguna says: "That's the spirit! Then, Ellone sends Rinoa and [Ultimecia to the past]! Ellone [brings back Rinoa]! Then [head to the future through compressed time]! Ultimecia lives far in the future where none of us can technically exist. There's only one way to make yourself exist in a world like that! As friends, don't forget one another! As friends, believe in one another! Believe in your friends' existence! And they'll also believe in yours. To be friends, to like one another, and to love one another... You can't do these things alone. You need somebody. Right, guys? What place reminds you of your friends? Imagine being in that place with all your friends. Once time compression begins, think of that place and try to get there! That's all! That place will welcome you. You'll be able to get there no matter what period you're in! You need love and friendship for this mission! And the courage to believe it. It's all about love, friendship, and courage! I'm counting on you guys!" To sum up the most important points learned from these quotes: 1) Ultimecia casts TC in the past (as seen from the games perspective). 2) We will see effects of TC as soon as she casts the spell. 3) The fact that time starts being compressed is what allows Squall and Co to get to the future. 4) They get to Ultimecias time using sheer willpower. 5) It is 'love, friendship and hope' which keeps everyone from being sucked into TC. And then there is a sixth basic point: 6) TC is never fully completed. This sixth point is never directly stated, but we know it to be true because as mentioned, both Rinoa and Edea make it quite clear that ONLY Ultimecia can exist in TC. Combining this with the fact that TC compresses all of time, we can conclude that if TC was ever fully completed, we couldn't be playing the game because Squall, or anyone/thing else for that matter, would not be able to exist already from the beginning of disc 1. Since this is clearly not the case, we can quite confidently say that TC was never fully completed. From this simple fact, we can furthermore establish that TC is a process which takes time. To be specific, we say that TC works at a finite speed(saying it works infinitely fast means that the entire ULOT should be compressed as soon as the spell is cast, which violates the fact that TC was never completed). It is this fact which implies that the ULOT is finite, as mentioned near the beginning. The reasoning is that if the ULOT were infinitely long, Ultimecia would never be able to fully compress time (because TC works at a finite speed), and this implication is enough to convince these authors that the line of time is finite. If you are now wondering exactly how fast TC evolves, it is unfortunately a question that is impossible to answer. All we can say is that it must be pretty damn fast! Now let's return to the point in time where Ultimecia casts the spell. If we were to look at the ULOT from the outside, what would we see happen once she casts the spell? Well, we previously thought that TC could be seen as pressing the ULOT into a single point, so we might imagine that if we looked at time from the outside, that's what we'd see happen; the ULOT literally being squashed into a single point. However, TheOnionKnight realised that it's not that simple. You see, since this literal change on the ULOT would have lasted for a finite amount of time before reverting back to its normal state, once it was over, there would be no indication that it had ever happened to begin with! This is acceptable in the dynamic time theory because time is always changing anyway, but in the static time theory, this is unacceptable, because the effects of TC are supposed to ALWAYS be a part of time. If this were not the case, the events where Squall travels to the future, kills Ultimecia and travels back (as well as the events where Ultimecia passes her powers to Edea) would only exist for a finite amount of time, which makes absolutely no sense at all if we are to think of all events as being set in stone! Having first realised this problem, TheOnionKnight also provided a solution. His theory on TC is that TC is to be considered as just another event on the ULOT, albeit a very complex event. What he proposes is that this TC event, would be an event which while lasting for only one subdivision of time(be it infinitely small or not), would eventually contain all events on the entire ULOT. As always, TheOnionKnight was able to produce a fitting analogy: If you view the ULOT from the outside, and picture it as being a film consisting of slides, you'd find one slide which we could apptly label the 'TC-slide'. This slide would, if TC were fully completed, contain the entire ULOT. But it is not that the TC event creates a seperate ULOT; it doesn't form duplicates of all the events on the ULOT. To understand what Onion has proposed, think of one of those odd 'picture in a picture' pictures. For example, imagine you have a picture of a man watching television, from such an angle that you can see what he is watching. Then imagine that the image you see on the television screen is the exact same picture as the 'original' picture. In theory, this picture would extend for ever inside the picture, because each 'layer' would have another television in it. Onions idea is that TC acts in the same way; the TC event would be like the television of the above example. But remember, as I said before, TC creates no duplicates! Instead, the ULOT we see inside the TC event IS the ULOT which the TC event is situated on. What this means, is that once the TC event contains more and more events, those same events on the ULOT will essentially be compressed. In a fully compressed time, the TC event would thus be seen to contain the entire ULOT, so the entire ULOT would be compressed. The idea is then that Ultimecia could shape the events within the TC event as she finds suiting, and in doing so shapes the ULOT which the TC event is on. To make a diagram of the TC event on the ULOT: <---------------A--TC-B-----C A is the event in which Squall defeats Adel. TC is, you guessed it, the TC event. B is Squalls return from the future. C is the Garden party in the ending. This astounding idea seems overly complicated at first, and it took me (Sir Bahamut) quite a while to fully appreciate it, but it works incredibly well because TC would merely be another fated event on the ULOT, just as set in stone as the rest. Furthermore, the events contained in the TC event would be a 'fated' set of events, which would not actually be ALL of the events. This rids us of the problem of TC lasting for a finite amount of time while keeping up with the basic ideas of TC. But it was realised that there was one problem in any view of TC which caused all sorts of debates. The problem is this: We have already established that TC is cast in the past, and that it works at a finite speed. But why do we only see the effects of TC after Adels defeat? To make an image which should make the question clear: Past<---------------A----------------B----------------->Future A is the event in which Ultimecia casts the spell. B is the event in which Adel is defeated. Now, TC would by all logic have to affect the events inbetween A and B before affecting B, since it works at a finite speed, and is cast in a point before B. This is all nice until we realise with startling realisation that the events between A and B include, among other things, the events we play in the game! We see that TC is cast long before event B, yet for some mysterious reason we see no effects anywhere before event B, when common sense would dictate that the events inbetween should experience the same kind of "Hippie weirdness" (a joke term by Onion which caught on) that we see after Adel is defeated (ie. the room melting away, big bubbles of memories floating around, falling up into the sea etc). But for some odd reason, we don't. Why not? Several attempts were made to explain this, ranging from the idea that Ultimecia casts TC in more than one point in time to new elaborate theories on TC, but no good explanation could be found. Eventually though, after returning to the very basics of the static time theory, a seemingly very elegant answer was put forth. ------------------- THE PLOT THICKENS ------------------- Squall and Rinoa are just having a normal day, but Squall suddenly gets this urge to travel to the future(imagine he has a fully functional timetravelling machine). Rinoa decides to stay behind, not really being in the mood. At exactly 13:05, Squall leaves Rinoa behind and travels far into the future, where he stays for 50 years before deciding it's time to go back. The thing is, he sets the machine so that he arrives back at exactly 13:06. From Rinoas perspective, Squall has been gone for only one second, while from Squalls perspective he's been gone for 50 years. What this example shows is that timetravelling makes the idea of one absolute timeline(ie. the ULOT) redundant. Instead, people might measure wildly different times between two events, like in the example above. The thing is, they are both equally correct. What we have arrived at is in fact the fact that time is relative to the observer! This is an accepted theory also in the real world, although we use wildly different reasoning to arrive at the conclusion. Nonetheless, timetravelling gets rid of the idea of one set ULOT. Instead, we have to introduce a new concept: the Personal Line Of Time(PLOT). The idea is that instead of the ULOT, each particle has it's own PLOT mapping out the events of it's 'life' from beginning to end. Each PLOT would still be fated and set in stone though, it's just that we cannot measure things in one time anymore. Instead, we have to measure times relative to each PLOT. Of course, in this discussion there is no practical purpose for measuring PLOTs for individual particles. We are much more interested in PLOTs of much larger objects, like people. The PLOT of a person would then be the sum of the PLOTs of the particles making up that person. The idea of the PLOT is quite obvious based on other things too, most notably the fact that Ultimecia is unaffected by TC. If she compresses all of time, yet she herself is not affected, we must assume she is following a seperate line of time than the rest of the ULOT, which is exactly what we have concluded here, except we don't restrict this feature to Ultimecia alone. Everyone and everything are on seperate times-following seperate PLOTs-, and the reason Ultimecia can carry on as normal is because she compresses all PLOTs except her own! The establishment of the PLOT means we have to scrap our faithful ULOT, and rather embrace a new idea of time, one where all the PLOTs unfold next to eachother forming what we have chosen to call the PLOT-sheet. In this picture of time, there are no literal loops; one might say that the PLOT-sheet contains no 'bumps'. Instead, events including timetravelling are merely natural events on a persons PLOT. To make an example, we could consider the PLOTs of Rinoa and Squall based on the example in the beginning of this section. If we label the event in which Squall leaves, event A, and the event in which he returns, event B, their PLOTs would look something like this: Squalls PLOT: Birth--------------A------------------B---->Future Rinoas PLOT: Birth--------------A-B---->Future. Even events involving travelling to the past would work the exact same way. Now, we concluded earlier that the ULOT must have been created at once, and in the same way, the PLOT-sheet would have been created all at once. This means that every PLOT can be considered to have the same 'boundary'. In other words, although two PLOTs may start at different times in the history of the universe as a whole(ie. when using the ULOT as the picture of time, which is still viable at large scales), they'd start at the 'same time' simply because they'd have been created at the 'same time'. To make an image, look at the figure below. Every line is the PLOT of one person, and the number written infront denotes what year(as seen from the ULOT) they are born: 1000-----------------------------------------------------> 1567-----------------------------------------------------> 807------------------------------------------------------> 1289-----------------------------------------------------> And so on and so forth. To repeat this essential point: if every PLOT is created at the 'same time', they can be considered as having the same 'boundary' (The PLOT-sheet has two boundaries because we are assuming it to be of finite length). In this sense, all of time exists at the 'same time' like we concluded near the beginning. Early on we also brought in the idea that every event can be seen as flowing forward in the same way. We extend this here to say that each event on a given PLOT flows towards the boundary event at the end of the PLOT. But what about the problem of the "hippie weirdness"? The solution lies in the idea of the PLOTs having the same boundaries and existing side by side as in the diagram above. If we consider Ultimecias PLOT and Squalls PLOT as unfolding next to eachother, we realise what is clearly shown to us in the game: the event on Ultimecias PLOT in which she casts TC is adjacent to the event on Squalls PLOT in which he has just defeated Adel! To make a picture: Ultimecias PLOT: Birth---------------A------------------> Squalls PLOT: Birth---------------B------------------> A is the event in which Ultimecia casts TC. B is the event where Squall has just defeated Adel. The event A, though far in the past as seen from Squalls PLOT, is adjacent to the event B on the PLOT-sheet! Bringing in TheOnionKnight's theory on TC, we have that the TC event is established on every PLOT-event adjacent to event A. That's why we only see "hippie weirdness" after Adels defeat and nowhere else. In the words of TheOnionKnight, "TC happens where it happens because that's where it happens!" --------------- UPDATE (2006) --------------- It has been brought to our attention by more than one person that there are some unfortunate flaws with this explanation of why TC occurs where it does. Firstly, if Squall's and Ultimecia's plot are to be considered as starting at the same time, and yet having coinciding TC events as seen in the diagram above, the implication is that they must be just as old as eachother, which obviously does not fit the game. Secondly, if we are to consider all of time in FF8 to have come into existence all at once, it would seem more reasonable that all of time experienced TC at the same time, namely everywhere in time at once, which again makes no sense. Further similar problems also arise. It seems all three authors were too pleased with how neatly the given explanation resolved the problem to recognise such elementary flaws. Now, unfortunately, these authors will not be attempting to solve these problems. Firstly, we are too tired of these debates, and secondly, we have come to accept that TC is a concept which Square never intended to be understandable (hence why all the game tells us is that "It's a mystery!"). We have come a long way, and understood a lot, but ultimately, TC still eludes us. It's a shame, but after all, this is only a video game. Of course, if you happen to be able to see a way to explain what we cannot, please send us a mail to kristianstrommen@c2i.net But now, we continue with the rest of the FAQ, leaving this final TC question unanswered. --- Now we can return to the question of what happens when Ultimecia casts the spell. Using TheOnionKnights theory on TC as the basis, Squall and Co would enter the TC event, and since Ultimecias time could be thought of as being dragged in to the TC event(although take in mind that there is no literal dragging of any PLOT), Ultimecias time will soon be part of the TC event. As implied by Odine and Laguna, they would then concentrate on where they wanted to go, which is what lets them get exactly where they want. But here we have Ultimecias time as being inside TC, while Odine says that you will "leave TC" when getting to Ultimecias time. Here it seems that Odine must mean that the party will leave the range in which events are compressed completely. In other words, you could think of TC as an explosion, slowly engulfing more and more of time. However, only in the very center of the explosion do events start getting compressed. This is the only viable explanation regardless of your view on TC, because if you're moving through TC to get to Ultimecias world, then Ultimecias world must be inside the events TC encompasses, meaning that "leaving TC" doesn't make any sense at all, even if it is Odine who says it! Moving one, once they get to Ultimecias time, they have some time before the castle will start seeing the full effects of TC, and as we see, things are more or less normal until in the final battle with Ultimecia. As the battle progresses, things get more and more warped, until we are left in a starry void. Here, Ultimecia has transformed herself so she can start absorbing all of time and space. You might think of her as a big sponge in the center of TC, sucking up events in time and space as they fall towards her. When a character is KO'd in battle, it is likely that the bond between that person and the rest of the party breaks, which is why they are "absorbed into time". Since it was their bonds of friendship that kept them going even while all of time was being compressed around them, a break in this bond would cause whoever is KO'd to get sucked into TC. However, as she is defeated, the spell is broken. Everything Ultimecia has absorbed seeps out again, and time and space revert to their normal form. As time de-compresses, the party are able to get back to their own time in the same way that they got to Ultimecias time; by concentrating on where they want to go, and believing in eachother. However, Squall is still not able to fully rely on his friends, so he is not able to make his way back. Instead, he ends up at the Orphanage in the past, meeting Edea and giving her the idea of SeeD and Garden. Ultimecia then arrives and gives Edea her powers. You might ask why she goes to exactly Edea and gives her her powers, instead of some other random sorceress. Considering that TC reacts to thoughts and emotions, an answer seems at hand. According to the Tutorial, Sorceresses are believed to want to avoid spreading their powers too thin, so Ultimecia would be wanting to find a sorceress so she can die in peace. But on the other hand, she also refused to yield to Squall. This means that the two strongest things on her mind after defeat would be a sorceress and Squall. It should then come as no surprise that TC sends her to Squall and a sorceress at the same time! Squall then makes another attempt at getting back, but yet again fails, and gets stuck in some sort of timewarp; a mixture of various times, seemingly reacting to his own thought, emotions and memories. As said above, he ends up alone in a barren wasteland because he is still stuck in his 'lone wolf' attitude. As he tries to simply walk his way out of this place, he realises eventually that he's not getting anywhere, and that he's stuck. Affected by these thoughts, the time warp now alters, and when Squall turns around, he finds that he is literally stuck on a tiny island in the middle of nowhere. Collapsing, he starts thinking about Rinoa, and yet again, the time-warp he's in reacts to that, but since his emotions are full of despair and hopelessness, what he sees is inevtiably tainted by just that. Because of this, he sees his memories all twisted, and even sees things which haven't happened(like Rinoas helmet shattering in space). Finally, he collapses from the strain. There is some dispute whether or not Squall dies here or not, but either way, what happens next is the same: Rinoa, through her love for Squall, is able to make her way to him and save him (remember that emotions were the key in this situation). As they embrace, they both break free from the time warp, and can proceed to the Garden, where a big party awaits. It should be made clear now, that if we were to stay on after the end of the game, we'd eventually see Ultimecia be born, rise to power, and conquer the world. But before she'd be able to compress time, Squall and Co would arrive from the past and kick her ass. Ultimecias inevitable rise to power would be a necessary sacrifice for her defeat. One good thing is that if Odine is correct in his assertion that Rinoa was the only sorceress left after Adels defeat, then Ultimecia puts an end to the succession of witches forever. After all, she would be the only sorceress of her time, and she doesn't pass on her powers to someone in her own time, she passes them on to someone in the past. This means that after Ultimecias death, there would be no more sorceresses! "And that, as they say, is that." ----------------- THE CONCLUSION ----------------- In our quest to understand time in FF8, we have found ourselves moving from the initial idea of an evolving ULOT to the PLOT-sheet set in stone. There is no universal time which we can measure events with, because timetravelling implies that people may measure the time between two events differently; we can say that time is relative in FF8. Adding the idea that you can't change the past, a somewhat open statement by Ellone taken at face value, we can show that all of time exists side by side -- that is, all PLOTs have the same initial boundary -- since all events would have to have been created at once. From this, we can establish that all events on a given PLOT can be considered 'present states', in the sense that any event can be seen as 'flowing' from the past to the future, despite all events already being laid out by fate, a dominant force in FF8. In this interpretation of time in FF8, we can explain almost everything we are shown in the game using the simplest possible framework requring very few assumptions(all being based on logic and common sense) to work. In turn, TC is seen as a single event in time which will, after a finite amount of time(meaning it works at a finite speed), contain all the events on all the PLOTs besides the one of the caster ; Ultimecia. Once this happens, people cease to exist in the sense that they stop flowing in time. Instead, their PLOTs would basically be split up into single events; frozen slides of time. Ultimecia could then absorb all of time and space, becoming a new God, presumably capable of creating a new universe after her own fashion. Although some holes still exist, most notably the lack of an explanation as to why we only see TC start where we do, the static time theory provides a framework which satisfactorily explains all other phenomena involving time-travelling, time-loops and time in general in FF8, and it does so in a most elegant manner too. ------------------ ADDITIONAL NOTES ------------------ There are certain things which I have not put in the main bulk of text, but which may nonetheless be of interest to the reader. This section will cover those unanswered questions. 1) What of the dynamic time theory? -Explanation of the Dynamic Time Theory- Written by: Squall of SeeD/Glenn Morrow The purpose of this article is to explain the Dynamic Time Theory, a matter which myself and Sir Bahamut don't fully agree on, while we do on most other points concerning time in Final Fantasy VIII. While he holds to the Static Time Theory (the theory stating that time is what it is, has always existed as it is, and always will exist as it is, with changes in the past being an impossibility), I hold to this view. As such, he and I felt that it would be best if I were to offer my own explanation of this theory. The very first principle one should have in mind concerning the Dynamic Time Theory is that it would also involve a static timeline in a sense, which is to say that it also "is what it is" and that is what it is supposed to be. This theory calls for carrying the assumption that time is something that is always evolving. When it moves forward, from one day to the next, one hour to the next, or one second to the next, it is evolving. The same is true of what is wrought by changes in the past. Time is not so much "overwritten" -- a common misconception of this view of time -- as it is that it evolves into something else. What happened before isn't erased from existance. It still happened. Time has just picked up and moved on. For an example, I am now referencing Marvel Comics' storylines concerning Cable, the son of the popular co-founding X-Man named "Cyclops." "Your future is my past..." When Cable was an infant, the ages old villain known as "Apocalypse" infected him with a virus that was essentially living metal that grows and assimilates other organic material into this same "techno organic" material of which it is composed. This virus -- known as the "Techno Organic Virus" -- was ravaging baby Cable's nervous system, much of the left half of his body being assimilated into this organic metal, and it seemed assured that the infant would die. However, a representative of the Askani Sisterhood that existed thousands of years in the future (a future ruled by Apocalypse, in which the ancient evil was opposed by this very Sisterhood) appeared to take Cable to the future, where he could be saved. Cyclops was forced to let his child go to the future in order to save his life. There, the infant was raised to become the saviour of the people, destined to someday confront Apocalypse and topple the tyrant forever. While that day DID come and Apocalypse WAS killed, the New Canaanite Order that ruled in his absence was also evil and things were not much better than they were before. The Clan Chosen -- Cable's people -- lost their war to the New Canaanites, and all that had been accomplished seemed to be for nothing. It was decided that Cable should go back in time and attempt to prevent Apocalypse from ever ascending to his nigh-omnipotent power at the end of the second millenium A.D. After several years in the past, Cable -- with the help of his father and the other X-Men -- was successful in preventing Apocalypse's ascension, and a few months later, Cable achieved his final victory over Apocalypse, sliding a psionic javelin through the spiritual essence of the tyrant, discorporating him on a spiritual level. With Apocalypse's ascension undone, the future that Cable had been raised in simply ceased to be. But not entirely. It still happened. He and others -- including his sister, who was revealed to be the founder of the Askani Sisterhood in that era -- that had been there still remembered it, and those who had merely heard about it still knew that it had existed. Nothing changed in the present era as a result of preventing the future from coming to pass, despite the fact that the present was a product of that future. Time simply moved on. It evolved. Even with the future undone, Cable's Personal Line of Time (PLOT) would still look like this: A-----B-----C-----D----->Future A = His birth. B = Him going to the future. C = Him returning to the past several years after he had left, but as a grown man. D = Apocalypse's ascension being prevented. With that in mind, before we examine the Universal Line of Time (ULOT), it should be considered that the ULOT is a product of all the PLOTs within. The ULOT is like a giant tapestry composed of all the PLOTs that constitute it, each PLOT being akin to a thread in the tapestry. So long as a single PLOT existed in a certain era or timeline, undone or not, that era or timeline is part of the universe's own PLOT (the ULOT). Thus, in the situation being discussed, the PLOT of the Marvel Universe would look like this: (Note: For the sake of simplicity, this illustration DOES NOT take into account any other alternate timelines, circumvented future eras, or anything similar to them as regarding the Marvel Universe; there are simply far too many of them to take into account without deviating from the purpose of this article; they are not being disregarded; they are simply beyond the scope of this article to detail here.) A-----B-----C-----D----->Future A = The birth of the universe. B = Apocalypse's ascension. C = Cable's return to the past. D = Apocalypse's failure to achieve his god-like powers. While the Static Timeline Theory as proposed by Sir Bahamut would call for the concept of a timeline being a misnomer, as can be seen here, it's still fully possible for time to be looked at as a line and as something in which PLOTs remain intact despite changes in the past. "If it leaks we can kill it..." For a similar example, let us look to the Terminator film series. It is a saga based on the premise that a computer system called "SkyNet" possesses artificial intelligence to the extent that it decides to annihilate Homo Sapiens and allow machines to rule the Earth. This begins on a day remembered to history as "Judgment Day," the day on which SkyNet asserted its individuality and commandeered the computer systems of American nuclear missle silos, targeting them at Russia, knowing that Russia would counter-attack with its own nuclear arsenal, effectively raining nuclear destruction upon much of the world and removing two of SkyNet's greatest potential opponents. Naturally, a war between the Homo Sapiens and the machines ensues with a legendary leader among the Homo Sapiens rising up to guide his people during the conflict. In the first two Terminator films, SkyNet has sent back mechanized assassins in an attempt to, first, kill Sarah Connor -- mother of the legendary Homo Sapien commander -- before she will have her child, and later, to kill her son, John, after his birth. In both cases, the plots are foiled by agents of John's future self also sent back through time. The second incident actually results in Judgment Day being averted and the future -- apparently -- undone. Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, however, established that Judgment Day could not be averted and that the future where a war with machines ensued would have to take place, but when these events were set in motion changed across the course of the series. August 29, 1997 was the date given for Judgment Day in Terminator 2: Judgment Day. This date was given first by Sarah Connor and later by the T-800 sent to protect John. Sarah should know because Reese would have told her back in 1984. The T-800 should know for obvious reasons to those familiar with the film series. That said, Terminator 3 takes place 10 years later, by which time 1997 has obviously been and gone. In fact, Terminator 2 probably took place in 1997 seeing as how John Connor was 13 at the time and was conceived back in 1984. In other words, Judgment Day fell approximately 10 years later than it was supposed to in Terminator 3 (John is 23 during the third film). Despite this being the case, the events that happened in the future era that was pushed back 10 years still happened and the products of those events still occurred in the past. At this point, one may wonder what is relevant about all of this. The relevance comes in establishing that what we see in Final Fantasy VIII is not what it always was. The point is to establish that there was -- once upon a time -- an "original" timeline in which none -- or very few -- of the things that we see happen in Final Fantasy VIII happened, and that it was only through tampering with time that those events we see in Final Fantasy VIII came to pass in the first place. I will here offer an example of this concept, and then use the Terminator series to illustrate the matter: (Note: Any number of "re-writes" or evolutions may have played into the evolution of the Final Fantasy VIII Universe before the timeloop came to be established; for the purposes of simplicity, the minimal number required for the timeloop to come into play will be represented herealso, concerning Terminator's ULOT, this is just one possible representation of how it may have evolved.) -- The Evolution of Final Fantasy VIII's Universal Line of Time -- -Original Timeline- Squall is born. Squall dies without ever taking part in any of the key events of Final Fantasy VIII because none of it has happened yet. Someone -- possibly Ultimecia, or possibly Ellone herself -- screws with time in the future. -Second Timeline- Time has been screwed up, but evolves, and events happen to follow in such a way that Squall is party to defeating Ultimecia. He arrives in the past with her, where she gives Edea her powers and Squall gives her the ideas of SeeD and Garden (which she will now be destined to create, whether she originally came up with them or not). -Third Timeline- [The events of Final Fantasy VIII occur, with a timeloop established] -- The Evolution of Terminator's Universal Line of Time -- Original Timeline- Skynet rises to power on August 29, 1997 and takes over. Homo Sapiens resist the machines and Reese is sent back in time at some point to try to prevent the machines from ever rising to power in the first place. -Second Timeline- Reese is unsuccessful in stopping Judgement Day, which again occurs on August 29, 1997, but he meets Sarah Connor and they conceive a child, John, who will become the hope of the future. Skynet later tries to prevent John from ever becoming a problem and sends a T-800 back in time to kill his mother before John can be born. John knows who his father is and selects him to go back and save his mother. -Third Timeline- Reese successfully protects Sarah Connor, though he dies. Sarah gives birth to John. Judgment Day falls again on August 29, 1997. John becomes the leader of the Homo Sapien resistance. -Fourth Timeline- A T-800 is again sent back to kill Sarah, though it will fail as before. Skynet then sends the T-1000 back in time to kill John when he is 13 years old. John sends a T-800 back in time to protect his younger self. The T-1000 is destroyed and John Connor survives. The Judgment Day of August 29, 1997 is averted, though it falls 10 years later. John becomes the leader of the people once again, and will be assassinated later in life by a T-800. The T-800 is then captured and reprogrammed. The TX is sent back in a bid to do away with the younger John's lieutenants, though this time when he is 23 years old, meaning that it will occur just before the new Judgment Day came to pass. In other words, the previously established events of Terminator and Terminator 2: Judgement Day will not be changed in any manner. In response to the TX being sent back, the reprogrammed T-800 that killed his future self will be sent back. -Fifth Timeline- A T-800 is again sent back to kill Sarah, though it will fail under the same circumstances as did the one in the first Terminator movie. Skynet then sends the T-1000 back in time to kill John when he is 13 years old once more, and, again, John sends a T-800 back in time to protect his younger self. The T-1000 is destroyed and John Connor survives yet again. The Judgment Day of August 29, 1997 is averted once more. All these events occur as those in Terminato 2: Judgment Day did. 10 years after Judgment Day was prevented, the TX arrives in the past to kill John's lieutenants. For whatever reason, it fails to do this and is destroyed. Time then progresses the same as it had before, with the TX again being sent back in time to kill John's lieutenants. -Sixth Timeline- [Events of Terminator occur] [Events of Terminator 2 occur] [Events of Terminator 3 occur] With Terminator, we don't have a timeloop established with the end of Terminator 3, but we don't really need one either, because time is an ever-evolving thing. Since it's not required that things occur in exactly the same fashion everytime except in the case of a timeloop, events can progress much the same as they did before, though also different with the events of Terminator and Terminator 2 now set-in-stone, even while John doesn't necessarily get assassinated in this new timeline, and with the TX definitely not going back in time to kill John's now no-longer-living lieutenants. Does this mean that John will die in another way? Possibly. Possibly not. Does this mean that the TX will never be sent back again? Possibly. Possibly not. If not, then it may well be that this will be the final timeline, only there won't be a loop here like there was with Final Fantasy VIII. If there's no more time travel, then the timeline can progress naturally in this newest incarnation with either the final victory of the Machines or the Homo Sapiens. In either case, what we're dealing with is an ever-evolving timeline in which John Connor may or may not have played any part whatsoever in its original incarnation. The same is true of Squall in Final Fantasy VIII. The only difference with Final Fantasy VIII is that somewhere along the way, things happened in an absolutely perfect sequence so as to set up an eternal timeloop that will never break. Time evolved until this timeloop was established, and now time will continue to evolve naturally beyond the point of Adel's death. "You say you want an evolution..." For a real-world example of what I'm suggesting, let's examine the PLOT of John Lennon and assume that someone were to go back in time to prevent his death. First, we'll look at how the common misintrepretation of the Dynamic Time Theory would look at his PLOT, and then we'll examine just what Lennon's PLOT WOULD look like according to the Dynamic Time Theory in such a situation: -- Analyzing John Lennon's PLOT According to the Common Misintrepretation of the Dynamic Time Theory -- ^--------------->| | | | | | A---------B(C)[------->]Future | | | | | A-----------C | | |<---------------| A = John Lennon's birth. B = Lennon being shot five times by Mark Chapman and then dying. C = Lennon being shot in the shoulder, but being otherwise fine. (C) = The moment of C being imposed over B. [------->] = The rest of Lennon's life after time "starts up again." As can be seen in this illustration, the misinterpretation of the Dynamic Time Theory would call for the timeline in which Lennon died being negated and with it having never happened. However, this is not the case at all. As with the illustration regarding Cable's PLOT, the Dynamic Time Theory would actually call for taking the "negated" timeline into account, with the diagram looking like this: A-------B-C------->Future A = Lennon's birth. B = Lennon's death. C = Lennon being shot in the shoulder, but being otherwise fine. As in Sir Bahamut's diagram in which Squall goes to the future with one second passing from the perspective of Rinoa's PLOT between him leaving and him returning, from the perspective of Lennon's PLOT, he would be getting shot in the shoulder immediately after he died. All the time that had passed after the moment of his death would be the same as those fifty years had been for Squall, going unrecognized by his own PLOT. Notice that the diagrams for Lennon and Rinoa's plots in these two scenarios would be constructed in exactly the same manner: -- Lennon's PLOT -- A-------B-C------->Future A = Lennon's birth. B = Lennon's death. C = Lennon being shot in the shoulder, but being otherwise fine. -- Rinoa's PLOT -- A-------B-C------->Future A = Rinoa's birth. B = Squall leaving to go to the future. C = Squall returning from the future. I hope that so far I have successfully demonstrated the mechanics of the Dynamic Time Theory in a manner that is easy to understand. I will now touch upon those concepts within Final Fantasy VIII that could be construed as contradicting the concept, while they actually do not. "Silence! I can change my own destiny!" -Fate- The universe of Final Fantasy VIII -- and, consequently, its timeline(s) -- seems to be governed by the concept known as "fate" or "destiny," that concept which suggests all things to be pre-ordained. This concept most certainly fits with the Static view of time, and is often thought to be at odds with the Dynamic Time Theory. However, this is not the case. What is meant to be still is. What should happen happens. Changes to the past that cause time to evolve could merely be looked upon as fate. There is not really any contradiction present. It's simply a case of fate being far more obvious to recognize for what it is in the case of a timeloop in which events will always play out the same as the same people will make the same decisions every time. Discrediting Ellone -"You can't change the past"- Perhaps the biggest piece of evidence supporting the view of a Static Time Theory's validity is that Ellone tells Squall that "you can't change the past," her own efforts to do so having failed. While this might seem to be true, Ellone's unique situation has to be taken into account. It is her very attempts to change the past as seen in the game that play small parts in helping the future -- and, consequently, the past -- come to pass (Squall being able to tell Laguna "You were a silly Galbadian soldier. I didn't like your attitude at all," for instance). She's really only reinforcing it all. Ellone lives within a timeloop and is not aware of it, and being the same person everytime, she will always make the same decisions. This too could be looked upon as fate.. To add to these things, there's also the fact to consider that those she was sending people into the past (Squall and his friends) that had no intention to exert their wills over Laguna's, Kiros', and Ward's, and would likely not have done so even had they known that they could, unlike Ultimecia who freely and openly exerted her willpower unto others. The situation as it is, I personally don't feel that Ellone is a reliable source of information. While true that she could not change the past, she just couldn't change HER past, and being the same person throughout every revolution of the loop, she would try the same things every time. "I will cease to exist as I am now. Only to be reborn as a 'God' to rule over every soul." -Ultimecia's powers- In the event of the Dynamic Time Theory being valid, many would argue that we should be seeing an increase in Edea, Rinoa, and Ultimecia's powers with each turn of the timeloop, whereas the Static Time Theory would simply call for Edea receiving the powers she receives from Ultimecia when she receives them and in the quantity that she is destined to receive them. If this were the case, then, of course, Edea would increase in power until Ultimecia was simply capable of defeating Squall and the others, or until she herself was capable of doing so, thus, resulting in the timeloop breaking. However, the concept of the Dynamic Time Theory can still work with the timeloop in place without calling for the Witch Embodiment to increase in potency with each turn of the timeloop. Assuming that Ultimecia's power drops to a certain potency each time Ultimecia is defeated by SeeD, much of her supreme power is undone and lost to her. This idea is supported by the fact that she is back in her old body after the battle -- despite having transcended it previously, when her spiritual essence seemingly melded with the Witch Embodiment of the ages, her old body hanging beneath this ascended form like an empty shell -- and with her seemingly barely able to so much as stand, much less even attempt to exact revenge on Squall before she dies. She was obviously weakened and her focus seemed to be entirely on keeping herself alive long enough to pass on her powers. Assuming this all to be true, a numerical diagram of the transfer of power would look like this: (Note: For the sake of simplicity, and unless otherwise prompted, assume a Witch's full strength counts as 10, while that of Ultimecia's at the time of her death counts as a mere 4.) -Ultimecia's power added to Edea's. 10 + 4 = 14 -Adel's power added to Rinoa's. 14 + 10 = 24 (Rinoa's power, as well as Ultimecia's power before we fight her) -The power of the 11 Witches encountered in Time Compression added to Rinoa's. 24 + 110 = 134 -Ultimecia gets the shit kicked out of her and loses much of her power; her ascended form is destroyed, leaving her trapped in her former body, now battered and broken with it standing upon the verge of death; she passes her powers to Edea and then dies. 10 + 4 =14 Wash. Rinse. Repeat. The same quantity of power would be in play each time. I hope that this article serves to positively compliment Sir Bahamut's compilation of our thoughts on time in Final Fantasy VIII, and that it may serve the Final Fantasy VIII fan community to a vast extent in their understanding of the game's story. Hopefully, at the very least, it will allow fans to experience a new appreciation for the game's epic storyline. --END OF GLENN MORROWS TEXT-- 2) If TC evolves with time, does it follow a PLOT of it's own? Yes. Anything that evolves with time follows a PLOT. TCs PLOT would have to be seperate from the PLOT-sheet of FF8 though, or else it would compressed along with everything else, which doesn't make all that much sense. The TC-PLOT would be the same length as Ultimecias PLOT from the point in which she casts the spell till the point where she dies, because TC is a spell controlled by Ultimecia. But since Ultimecias PLOT is relative, the TC-PLOT is also relative, meaning we can't pin down any set time for it. 3) How does the Ragnarok and the CC Club get to Ultimecias time? This is the kind of thing which isn't really terribly relevant, because it's clear enough that it's not part of the storyline. It was just something that was needed so there could be a shop and a means of travelling in disc 4. However, there are a few possible answers: * TC is seen akin to an explosion, which means they could have gotten there as debris thrown across time, like cars in a ordinary explosion. Note that there is no literal explosion; it's merely an analogy of the evolution of the TC event. * They say that they went looking for Squall because they really wanted to play cards with him. Since Squall and Co got the future by willpower, maybe they unwittingly ended up following him because they were so focused on finding him. After all, as Laguna said, if you concentrate enough on a particular place(in this case, being with Squall), you'll be able to get there no matter what era you're in. The second answer seems to be the most likely one in any case, and is the one the authors adopt as truth. 4) What exactly is fate? Although I said this is a pointless question earlier on, it's still a rather interesting topic. In the static time theory, fate could be considered as the fact that you can't alter any event in time. In other words, fate and the static time are merely two sides of the same coin. Alternatively, you might replace 'fate' with something know as the anthropic principle. This is a term used in real life physics(although there are great disagreements concerning it's use), and basically says that we see things the way they are because we exist. To make a real life example, consider any of the elementary forces. If any of them were altered even in the tiniest way, it's almost certain that human beings could not have evolved to ask the question: Why are the elementary forces so finely tuned? In FF8, you might ask why the Ragnarok just happened to be right by Squall and Rinoa. Using anthropic reasoning, it is because if it had not been there, Squall would have died, and Ultimecia would have been able to compress time, which means the PLOT-sheet couldn't have existed to begin with, which in turn means we would not have been able to ask "Why is the Ragnarok just in the right place at the right time?". This view requires alternate universes however. There'd be many universes with many different events and scientific constants, but it is only in the ones where the events are set out just like in FF8 that people can actually ask the question: why do things happen the way they do? This indicates a possible anthropic answer for why the effect of TC is seen exactly after Adel's death and nowhere else; if it had appeared anywhere else, Squall and Co would not have been able to get to the future, and Ultimecia would have fully compressed time. So assuming an infinite amount of alternate FF8 universes, anthropic reasoning would indicate that the one we play is the only possible version. This is however hardly a satisfactory explanation, and one which these authors dismiss as being meaningful to discuss. Then again, fate may just be some sort of all powerful force which makes sure things happen in one specific way or the other. While being the by far most dissapointing option, it seems to be a likely one as well. 5) What are things like in real world physics? Is time static or dynamic? Surprisingly(or not), real world physics indicates that time may be static. You can use special relativity to show that the future and past exist as much as the present, so the notions of past, present and future are made redundant. For an observer, all of space-time would appear equal. So unless some new theory were to overthrow Einstein's, it seems that time in the real world is static as well. Introducing time-travelling to the real world yields the same conclusions we reach in the FF8 world; all timetravelling would have to be set in stone as well. It should however be noted that timetravelling in the real world seems rather unlikely, and is at best way, way beyond our current technology. If you're sceptical to my claims here, I'd recommend you read the book "The Fabric of The Cosmos" by Brian Greene, which explains what I summarised here. It's a very good read, and actually discusses a concept of time identical to static time. Here are some relevant quotes though which show clearly the connection: "So if you buy the notion that reality consists of things in your freeze-frame mental image right now [...], then reality encompasses all of the events in spacetime" (page 138) "If you time-travelled back to December 31, 1965, then you were there, you were always there, you will always be there, you were never not there. [The hypothetical event considered] did not happen twice, [...] your presence [there] will be an eternal and immutable feature of spacetime." (page 453) "If you timetravel to the past, you can't change it any more than you can change the value of pi." (page 454) Interestingly enough, I read this book after the static time framework had been completely deduced independently on the FF8 board here at GameFAQs. As you can imagine, it was a very pleasant surprise to have our ideas confirmed by such a top-notch scientist as Brian Greene, and it made us confident that we weren't merely babbling nonsense in the Time section of the FAQ! The book was also very helpful in inspiring the structure of the last draft of the Time section, as well as giving some good hints at how to easily explain certain concepts. I definitely recommend it to anyone interested in time and space! 6) Why DOES Ultimecia have to be in the past to cast TC? In the main text, I dismiss this question, claiming that it is impossible to tell due to a lack of information. However, recently, a user named Xshu had the insight to see one possible reason. First, recall that Squalls presence in Laguna during the flashbacks increased Lagunas powers, by effectively gaining Squalls powers as well as retaining his original ones. It seems that when you are inside someones mind using Ellones ability, your abilities are at least to a certain extent transferred and combined with the 'hosts' own powers. Why is this important? Well, when Ultimecia goes to the past, she goes inside a young Adel. If Adel were a sorceress at that point, Ultimecias already great powers should be combined with the young Adels powers. What Xshu speculates, is that Ultimecia was not capable of casting TC using only her own powers; she needed the powers of the powerful sorceress Adel in her prime youth as well! Although there are several things that could be said against this idea, and I personally think that we weren't ever meant to know why Ultimecia needed to be in the past, it is at least a commendable idea that can be considered. 7) Does time flow or does it not? This highly fascinating question was more or less bypassed in the main bulk by tacking on an extra assumption here and there, but in reality, those assumptions were based solely on intuition. We feel that time flows, don't we? The flow of time seems to be as ingrained into our being as our notion of only 3 space dimensions. Yet in string theory, there seems to be many more space dimensions, so perhaps the flow of time is also merely something we are cheated into thinking because that's how it appears to be. It turns out that the question of the flow of time is a big unanswered question in physics today. Brian Greene in "The Fabric of the Cosmos" mentioned above dedicates an entire sub-section of the book to the question "Does time flow?" As mentioned above, the conclusions he reaches seem to be nothing else but static time. After deducing that all of (space)time exists all at once, like in static time, he concludes that "Every moment 'is'. Under close scrutiny, the flowing river of time more closely resembles a giant block of ice with every moment forever frozen in place" (page 141). However, he acknowledges the fact that this is extremely counterintuitive and hard to grasp, and adds that "Time is a subtle subject and we are far from understanding it fully. It is possible that some insightful person will one day devise a new way of looking at time and reveal a bona fide physical foundation for a time that flows" (page 141). So I am afraid I can't give you any spectacular answers to the question of the flow of time. At least you are not alone in being confused about it! 8) You mentioned alternate universes above. Could these not be used to explain the impossibility of changing the past? If you assume that when you travel to the past, you not only travel to another time, but to another, alternate universe, then this would explain why you can't change the time in your own universe. But since you couldn't be changing any other universe (we assume the laws of physics would be the same in all these universes), this is really not necessary. It is much much simpler to merely assume there is one universe, and the past cannot be changed because that's how time works. Period. Nothing new is gained from introducing alternate universes, they merely clutter things, hence by Occams Razor, we should dismiss them. --------- THE END --------- This is what we have made of time in FF8, and we hope you enjoyed the read! If you believe we have made errors, or that you have better theories (which we won't deny as a possibility for sure), please contact one of the authors. Also, if you have more questions, please don't hesitate to ask, and we will do our best to answer. Means for contacting us can be found near the beginning of the FAQ, but in general, you are advised to send your mails to kristianstrommen@c2i.net ===================================== -Section III: -Ultimecia- ===================================== PREFACE: Ultimecia, the main villain, is a women shrouded in mystery. Her motives are never revealed, her background never brought up, and all in all, we don’t know anything about her except that she appears to be pissed off at SeeD and that she wants to compress time for power, demonstrated by her scan info: "A sorceress trying to change the world by compressing time and taking power from all sorceresses." Compressing time would, by uniting all of time into a single event, put all of the sorceress powers from all of time into one point, which Ultimecia would then absorb, demonstrated by the final Ultimecias scan info: "Ultimecia, transformed to absorb all time and space. Absorbing all existence as we speak." Absorbing all of time and space, as well as receiving all of the sorceress powers throughout time would essentially make Ultimecia God. This quest for supreme power is generally accepted as at least one big motivation behind her actions, but we are still left to wonder if Ultimecia really has any other reasons for wanting to do what she does. And how did she become evil in the first place? It seems unlikely that she was simply born purely evil, intent to become God from day 1. It is possible that Ultimecias only real motive was power, but this next part of the FAQ will present two theories which expand on Ultimecias origins and motivations. In the end, we hope that you will at least understand that there may be more to Ultimecia than meets the eye. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 1) THE RINOA = ULTIMECIA THEORY This highly controversial theory has become immensely (in)famous ever since it was first conceived of. Whoever it was who first came up with the idea, we don't know, because so many ripped him/her off that it's become impossible to tell by now. The theory basically states that Ultimecia is in fact an older Rinoa. In other words, after the game ended, a string of events was set into motion, ultimately leading to Rinoa ending up "becoming" Ultimecia. This simple idea has been subject to much hate, and much praise too. It seems you either love it or hate it. Ultimately, we will show that the theory is highly implausible, and simply not valid, or even possible as a theory. We will show that there is absolutely no basis in assuming Square intended for Rinoa to be Ultimecia, ultimately nailing the coffin by referring to the Ultimania Guide itself, Square's official guidebook. THE BASIS The R=U theory is a proposition of what might happen to Rinoa after a set of assumptions are made. To be precise, these assumptions are: 1) A sorceress has extended lifespan, and will live much longer than a normal human. 2) Rinoa wouldn't give away her powers to some other innocent girl, and would instead want to keep them herself. 3) Rinoas mental strength isn't all that good if she's all alone(ie. without Squall and Co). You may notice that assumptions 2 and 3 are really subsets of a greater assumption, or rather interpretation of the plot; Rinoas psyche. Obviously everyone will form an opinion of the main characters psyche during the game, and this theory is based on an interpretation of Rinoa which makes assumptions 2 and 3 perfectly logical and plausible. Assumption 1 is brought up later, but just accept it now for the sake of understanding the theory. It is quite trivial to see that once the three(or as explained, two) assumptions are drawn, we can deduce that Rinoa will outlive Squall and all her friends. They will all die eventually, whether it be of age, illness or in combat. Rinoa will witness her true love and Knight(Squall) die, as well as her father and all her other friends, die. They will die and she will not. I mentioned that Squall is Rinoas knight. Just to remind you what we know about a sorceress knight: Edea tells us that a sorceresses Knight is supposed to help maintain the sorceresses mental stability, keep her from bucking under to the pressure of the people(remember that sorceresses are generally hated, there is even an organisation made solely for killing them!). Adel for instance, had no Knight, and I don’t think I have to remind you what kind of a sorceress Adel was! An example of a good knight, would be Edeas knight, Cid. So we have a Rinoa, all alone in a world filled with people who generally want her dead, fear her and hate her, knowing that SeeD still exists to kill people like her. We have a Rinoa in this scenario, without a Knight. Based on the aforementioned assumptions, we can now see that Rinoa could very easily be Ultimecia, driven insane by the grief and pressure, probably driven to severe paranoia. Eventually, she is so warped that there's hardly any trace of the old Rinoa in her. Instead, she is now the evil Ultimecia, trying to compress time and absorb all sorceress powers and eventually all time and space itself. NOTE: Some people think Ultimecia could be a sane Rinoa trying to get back Squall, but this makes absolutely no sense at all seeing as Ultimecia tries to kill Squall several times. If Rinoa really is Ultimecia, the only reasonable option is that she is so twisted that she retains no aspects of her old self(ie. Rinoa and Ultimecia have to essentially be different minds in the same body). I should add that if Rinoa continued to use GFs after the game ended, her insanity would doubtlessly be "amplified". GFs are very effective at removing memory after all. Remember Squall. He had forgotten almost all his childhood except the strongest memories of Ellone, and he'd only used GFs for 4-5 years. Of course this added assumption cannot realistically be backed up by anything over than personal opinions on what happens after the game, so it it is not a strong point in itself, and we are really left with insanity as the thing. The theory requires such a strong insanity over such a long time that Rinoa could literally become a completely different person(if you then wonder what the point of the theory is, since R and U are basically different people anyway, you are not alone). Now, you may ask yourself what "hints" supposedly back up this claim? And are there not certain things in the game which seem to contradict this theory? In this next section, all arguments used in favour of the theory are discussed, and as we shall see, it does not contain much backing from the game. NOTE: This next bit was written (almost) entirely by Squall_Of_SeeD, based primarily on the framework created mainly by myself(Sir B), with hints and such having been compiled from a multitude of sources over time. Also note that sorceress will be referred to as Witches in this next bit, seeing as that is that they were called in the japanese version. ---------------------------- 1) Witches and Immortality ---------------------------- The theory works off of the assumption that Witches have immortality as its core concept. Often-cited evidence of this is that Edea's facial features are far younger than should be the case for a woman married to a 40 year old man (as her husband, Cid Kramer, happens to be). Another bit of evidence offered in this regard is that Ultimecia needed to go further into the past to cast Time Compression than the generation the game takes place in. When she finally is sent far enough back, it is into Adel's younger self that she is sent. The assumption here is that Ultimecia must have needed to go much further back in time, and that Adel, consequently, has lived longer than a normal lifespan. *Response*: There's no reason to assume this to be the case, for starters. Edea's face certainly looks more developed and mature than those of Ellone, Selphie, Quistis, or Rinoa. She certainly has the appearance of a woman at least in her thirties. For that matter, even if she didn't, there's little reason to assume she wouldn't have married an older man. As for Adel, considering how little we know of the mechanics of Time Compression, it's hardly a safe forest to venture into when looking for support for this notion. We don't know the limits of Junction Machine Ellone's power to send Ultimecia into the past. It may have been one year shorter than where she needed to be or 100 years too short. ------------------------------- 2) Witches and Dying in Peace ------------------------------- Near the ending of the game, just before Ultimecia's death, Edea makes this very important statement: "In order to die in peace, a sorceress must be free of all her powers." What, then, does she mean? Does she mean that dying without first giving up one's powers would mean a bad afterlife existance for a Witch? Or does she mean that a Witch must simply be free of her powers to die? This could, perhaps, be taken to mean "Remaining alive, but not properly, forever caught in the dying moment until the Witch is free of her powers." If this is so, then it may well be that Witches are immortal after all, if they can't even die until they are free of their powers. In fact, the Japanese line that Edea speaks here is simply "A Witch cannot die while still holding on to the Witches' power." It may be that in the case of Witches who do die, they're either giving up their powers so as to be free of the pain of death, or their body is simply forcing them to surrender their powers. *Response*: A strong point that may support the theory, but on its own doesn't do so, if only because SeeD fights and defeats 13 Witches during the game, all of whom die either immediately after being dealt a fatal blow or shortly thereafter. If such a concept of remaining as long as was desired were present, it seems more reasonable to assume that the story would have made a point of demonstrating it. ---------------------- 3) Witches and Hyne ---------------------- Hyne is said to have been the progenitor of the Witch Embodiment powers. The story of Hyne also goes that he created Homo Sapiens, then took a nap while they worked. When he awoke, he found that they had multiplied beyond his capacity to control them. In order for them to have multiplied so, it must be that his nap lasted a few hundred to several thousand years. This must mean that Hyne is immortal. Considering that the Witch Embodiment originates from him, it may well be that the Witches inherited increased longevity, or full immortality. *Response*: This segment suffers from the usual problem that most points in the theory do: A lack of support for the notion. Now, although you might think that these tree points for a Witch having extended lifespan are strong together, this is simply not the case, as will be seen in the end of this section. ---------------------------- 4) Witches and Appearances ---------------------------- While it may be argued that Ultimecia's gray hair -- something that normally wouldn't happen except in the case of aging -- is indicative of her lacking immortality, it should be kept in mind that when possessing Edea, Ultimecia changed the length of her host body's hair from several feet to a few inches in seconds. For that matter, through their use of Black Magicks, many Witches display physical abnormalities, whether they be the veins on Edea's face and her elongated fingers, Adel's muscular appearance and discoloured skin, or the larger-than-normal bodies of the eleven Witches encountered by SeeD as they made their way to the future. Another point often brought up to contest this aspect of the theory is that Adel seeking a successor suggests that Witches do have a limited lifespan, but it should be remembered that Adel was at war with the world, and her own subjects hated her. It may simply be that she feared being assassinated without having a chosen successor already selected. She wouldn't want to endure the pain of her death constantly until having found one. *Response*: These are good points, which I cannot find fault with. On their own, they don't prove -- or even suggest -- the immortality of Witches, but coupled with a strong suggestion that the concept is plausible, they would certainly support the notion. It should also be kept in mind, though, that Witches have a natural instinct to want to choose a successor that they feel is fitting for the power. As the game's tutorial says, they avoid spreading their powers too thin: Sorceress The legend goes that the Great Hyne created people. The sorceresses were given a fragment of Hyne's own power. It's hard to determine how many sorceresses exist today, for many keep their powers concealed. However, it is believed that they avoid spreading their power too thin. ----------------------- 5) Witches and Wings ----------------------- In the opening FMV, Rinoa is shown at one point emerging from a group of white feathers, the same colour as the feathers on her wings. She's later shown emerging from a group of black feathers, the same colour as the feathers of Ultimecia's wings. Ultimecia is the only Witch aside from Rinoa to be shown to have wings. This may be an indication of who Rinoa will become, her soul tainted and dark after the loss of her Knight. She is then no longer an "Angel," but a "Fallen Angel" instead, this represented through her black wings. *Response*: Wings and feathers are a motif of the main Witches in the game. Edea's dress has black feathers around the collar, Adel has two spiky wing-like protrusions extending from her back, Rinoa has her white feathery wings, and Ultimecia has her black, somewhat spiny, feathered wings. With this in mind, all that's represented here is a connection between Witches, not a connection between Rinoa and Ultimecia alone. The connection between Rinoa and Ultimecia is that their wings are black and white, representing good and evil, opposing representations of these concepts, and opposite representations of the use of the Witch Embodiment. ----------------------------------------------- 6) Ultimecia's Words During The Final Battle ----------------------------------------------- During the final battle with Ultimecia, her words may illustrate that she believes that the things one cares about will slip away from them inevitably, as Squall and Rinoa's other friends would have were she immortal: "Reflect on your..." "Childhood..." "Your sensation..." "Your words..." "Your emotions..." "Time..." "It will not wait..." "No matter..." "...how hard you hold on." "It escapes you..." This may have been an attempt on Rinoa's part to reach out to Squall. *Response*: Considering that Ultimecia makes no **other** attempt to "reach out to Squall" during the game, merely trying to kill him each time she encounters him instead, it's hardly plausible that she's suddenly doing that at this point. For that matter, It's not even clear what Ultimecia's really talking about here. She may be talking about time itself. It may be a round about way of her telling them that their defeat is inevitable. Personally, I think it most likely another reference to everything having been fated, even from Squall and the others' childhoods. Whatever it is, there's nothing to suggest it to have anything to do with Squall or to suggest that this is Rinoa talking. ----------------------- 7) Time Compression ----------------------- Recall that onboard the Ragnarok, Rinoa expressed a desire for time to stand still so that she could remain with Squall: Rinoa "I don't want the future. I want the present to stand still. I just want to stay here with you..." Now, recall that Ultimecia intended to use Time Compression, a Spell that would cause all time to exist in a single instance. While this is not necessarily the same thing as "making time stand still," Rinoa's words on the Rangarok **do** express a desire to control time. It may well be that Rinoa wanted to meet Squall again and be with him in a moment of peace forever. Having gone insane, however, she may well have forgotten her desire to use Time Compression to meet Squall, and then decided to use the Spell for other purposes. Insane people do insane things, as has been said before. *Response*: As with so much of this theory, this requires unsubstantiated assumptions. Aside from the obvious fact that Ultimecia could have met Squall again -- if that's what she so desired -- by simply using Junction Machine Ellone and going to the past, there's also the even more obvious fact that Ultimecia's goals as expressed by the game and hinted at by the Final Fantasy VIII Ultimania Guide had nothing to do with Squall. Ultimecia's goal was to avoid her fated death at Squall's hands, and to then become one with all that existed in the universe, though with mastery over it, essentially becoming God in the process. If you wish to know how we know this, read the section titled "An Ultimecia Analysis - The Unjust Persecution" by TheOnionKnight, where Ultimecias true motives are discussed at length. ---------------------------------------- 8) The Location of Ultimecia's Castle ---------------------------------------- This ties in with another aspect of the theory: Ultimecia's desire -- subconscious or otherwise -- to meet Squall. This concept is here illustrated by her having her castle anchored near the Orphanage, which had the flower field behind it where Rinoa and Squall had promised to meet. The castle would have actually been facing the flower field. It's rather suspicious that her castle should be there of all places. *Response*: The game offers a perfectly valid suggestion for Ultimecia's Castle being where it was without there being any reason to believe that she was waiting for Squall. Ultimecia hated SeeDs, and she had slaughtered the remaining SeeDs of her era shortly before casting the Time Compression Spell, made evident by their bodies being scattered across the beach behind Edea's House: http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v132/Squall_of_Seed/DeadSeeDs.jpg They don't appear to have been dead for long, so it's not as though Ultimecia built the castle, killed the SeeDs and then parked it there many years before with the intention of it remaining there forever. Also, the castle **floats**. Why build a floating castle to begin with if you're going to park it in one spot? The dead bodies of those SeeDs are a testament to Ultimecia's reason for anchoring the castle there. It makes much more sense -- especially in light of Ultimecia's hatred of the SeeDs and the obvious short amount of time that those SeeDs had been dead -- to conclude that Ultimecia parked the castle there and slaughtered the remaining SeeDs to settle a grudge before casting Time Compression. Granted, it's possible that she located her castle there from the start and that the SeeDs made an attempt to launch an assault against her shortly before she casted Time Compression, but this isn't suggested by the game nor as plausible. The castle being located above where the SeeDs had been brought together and raised for a time also allows for another point of emphasis on the Fated Children concept (the game's opening song is "Liberi Fatali," which means "Fated Children"), as did the Orphanage being Squall and the others' point of focus when passing through the Time Compression wave in an attempt to arrive in Ultimecia's era. As was the case with the overall concept of Ultimecia seeking to use Time Compression to meet Squall, this on its own doesn't serve as any evidence toward supporting the concept that Rinoa is Ultimecia, and would only apply if one had already accepted the concept and was using backwards reasoning. --------------------------------------------- 9) The Possible Origin Of Ultimecia's Name --------------------------------------------- There was an ancient Grecian King by the name of "Mausolus," whose queen -- also his sister -- was named "Artemisia." When he died, his grieving sister went somewhat insane and decided to erect the greatest tomb in history to honour him. She would even mix some of his ashes in her drink everyday. Perhaps the most devoted wife history has known, Artemisia spent the last two years of her life overseeing the construction of the monument to her beloved, seeing to it that the most skilled artisans that she could find took part in its construction, adorning it with statues of men and horses carved from marble. Also notable is that at some point after Masolus' death, invaders attempted to take his kingdom, but his queen used her cunning to organize the means by which to defeat all her kingdom's foes, despite being greatly outnumbered. The relevance of all this comes from the fact that "Ultimecia" could be one possible Japanese transliteration of "Artemisia." "A" and "u" are used interchangably in Japanese, as are "l" and "r" (the Ultima Spell and name has been mistranslated as "Atma" and "Altima" in the past, as a result). Further, "e" and "i" are often substituted for one another when translating from Japanese. Finally, the "c" in "Ultimecia" may have arisen from the "s" sound in "Artemisia." Further worthy of consideration is that many statues adorn Ultimecia's castle, and that the path leading down to the doors of Ultimecia's Master Room is strikingly similar to the path leading to the doors of the Mausoleum of Mausolus (his name and tomb having given rise to the term "mausoleum"), both having statues along their sides, for instance: http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v132/Squall_of_Seed/CastleandTomb.jpg Also relevant is that Ultimecia fought and killed many attacking SeeDs, the bodies of whom lay strewn acro