So. Paradox Endings...

[ShadowX40]

Lemme know if I'm getting this right...

Spoiler warning and all...

Are the Paradox Endings what make up the history of this parallel universe where everyone think Lightning died?

I've noticed that many times, these endings are referred to in the main game as the only history anyone knows until the Noel/Serah we are controlling changes those outcomes.

Augusta Tower and Academia 400af(?) come to mind.

[Akatosh]

Hi

Nope, you're wrong. Paradox endings and Augusta Tower forbidden history are 2 different things.
I'll explain a few, so watchout, spoiler alert.

Paradox endings : Those are "alternative endings" like lot of games have. Thoses are differnt way the story could finish. For exemple, when you are stuck in Neo-Bodum with Serah and the fake Lightning ask you to take her hand and stay with her. If you say "yes" Serah decide to stay forever in the dream and the game ends. This is one of the Paradox/alternative endings.

Augusta Tower : Hope created an evil Artificial Intelligence who merged with the future Proto-Falcie Adam because of a Time Paradox. Adam decided to kill all humans who created him and become the master of Academia (Yeah, sounds like "Terminator" )
The Caius you encounter in Academia 400 is not the real one, it's a robot looking like Caius and controlled by Adam.
Luckyly an oracle device recorded the fight against Serah + Noel VS Adam. So Hope (in the past) could see it and stop the Proto-Falcie project; so Adam has been never created, they will be never killed, and so on, and that's why you can reach Academia 4XX

I hope I could help you, time-travel story are often complicated

[ShadowX40]

Lemme clarify, I didn't mean the forbidden history.

When Fake Caius encounters you in Academia, he is under the impression that Noel and Serah were imprisoned in that tower. Why? Because in the Paradox Ending, they ARE imprisoned in the tower.

So in this context, do the Paradox Endings, which double as alternate endings to your journey, make up the history of world around your "FINAL" playthrough which would be the ending you get at the end of the game?

It sounds very confusing, but in my head, it sounds so much better.

[Konachibi]

Originally posted by Shadow X:

Lemme clarify, I didn't mean the forbidden history.

When Fake Caius encounters you in Academia, he is under the impression that Noel and Serah were imprisoned in that tower. Why? Because in the Paradox Ending, they ARE imprisoned in the tower.

So in this context, do the Paradox Endings, which double as alternate endings to your journey, make up the history of world around your "FINAL" playthrough which would be the ending you get at the end of the game?

It sounds very confusing, but in my head, it sounds so much better.

Not exactly. One way to look at it is that many of the timelines you visit aren't all part of a single history. The entire time travel system 13-2 employs isn't just time but also dimensions, using the ever popular multi-dimensional theorum.

Let me see if I can explain it... in two seperate dimensions there is a road.
In Dimension 1, at 12pm on Thursday a blue car will travel down that road.
In Dimension 2, at 12pm on Friday a blue car will travel down that road.

What Noel and Serah do throughout their journey is change it so that, in this instance, the blue car would travel down that road at 12pm on Thursday in Dimension 2, making Dimension 1 and 2 identical. Because of this, the past of Dimension 2 alters itself to become identical to Dimension 1 so that that blue car can go down that road at that time on that day.

In context to the game, consider the beginning of the game where Lightning leaps into Meteor right before it destroys Valhalla. Presumably she dies at that moment, since the scene freezes, turns black and white and Lightning says, "Noel, be there for Serah, because I cannot be."
That is the history of the dimension where Lightning presumably becomes the crystal pillar with Vanille and Fang, and doesn't wake up until after Valhalla appears, where she fights Caius.

The dimension Noel and Serah end up on at the 'ending' is still not the original history, as Lightning and Snow would still be around, but it is a history where Caius is defeated by Serah and Noel before his fight with Lightning, preventing him from summoning the meteor that kills Lightning in Valhalla, which then allows Lightning to sit on the throne and turn the crystal to lead into the beginning of Lightning Returns. The thing is, the dimension where Lightning dies from Meteor still exists, it's just that that one particular dimension Serah dies in doesn't lead to it anymore, but there'll still be millions if not billions of others that do ('cos that how multiple dimension theory works). Serah and Noel aren't really 'fixing' anything, they're just leading the dimensions they're able to get to down a path that allows them to progress to another one to try and reach their goal.

Considering all this, there isn't a single moment throughout the game where Serah visits her original dimension where Lightning doesn't dissappear, which is kind of sad in it's own way as it kind of makes her entire struggle throughout the game pointless.

Anyways, paradox endings are what happens to Serah and Noel in the other dimensions they jump to, that all have their own histories that may or may not be radically different from the other dimensions you've seen previously. The 'real' ending is the one Square Enix chose to follow up with in Lightning Returns, but any one of them could have been chosen as none of them are part of the original dimension FF13 is from.

[ShadowX40]

Surprsingly, I got all of that just fine. It actually elaborates on the ending for me a a bit more.

As to your end point, where the paradox endings are what happen to Serah and Noel in other dimensions that have their own histories...lemme see if I can pull this into an example.

Lets say when you are playing through the game, Serah/Noel are journeying through Dimension 10.

Is Dimension 10 just an amalgam of Dimensions (1-9), since other characters seemingly reference things that either did or didn't happen to Serah/Noel?

I hate to keep reiterating even after people explain it, but that ending with Augusta Tower and Giant Mistake really stood out to me (and the Oerba ending as well, but that one seems to be just more of a FF13 prequel ending)

For the most part, I understand it. Augusta Tower just left me feeling oh so bad for my heroes.
:(
I think I have a hang up over the ending, because I understand the logistics of it just fine.

[Konachibi]

Technically yes. Many dimensions have strong similarities to one another.

Using real life as an example, there's this dimension where I post this reply now, and another dimension where I post it 1 second later than now. All events past and even future could be identical in every way, there would just be that one discrepancy, so it would make sense that some of the dimensions Serah and Noel go to would be identical historically, allowing characters to reference past events that have happened in another dimension.

Now here's where things get really tricky. The ironic thing about a lot of the storyline in 13-2 is that Caius isn't actually the cause of all the trouble. As Noel states near the beginning of the game, his memories are beginning to escape him. This isn't because of what Caius is doing, because what Caius does is actually the thing that leads to Noel's life 700 years in the future.
The person actually creating the problem with time is actually Noel himself. He's not meant to be around at the times Caius makes the changes, and because of what Noel is doing in trying to alter time, it's altering his own future, which is why his memories keep dissappearing or changing completely. Also note that a lot of the time discrepencies Serah and Noel run into don't start to happen until they arrive at that time (e.g/ Atlas appearing in 005AF). In a sense, Noel is the bad guy of the entire story.

Another thing to think about is that, according to the prophecy, Valhalla will appear with the death of the last seer. At the 'ending', Valhalla appears when Serah dies, which would mean in that dimension, Serah is the last seer, which could possibly be due to the alterations Noel and Serah keep making in the past that could result in the seers they meet dieing before their original appointed time and causing Serah to be the last one, many decades before it should have happened in Noel's original dimension.
If that is the case, it actualy means what Serah and Noel do throughout their journey is actually make everything considerably worse than what Caius was doing, since according to his original dimension the world continues for another 700 years before the last seer dies and he goes back in time to make the process repeat itself. But then I also suppose if they hadn't done that, then Lightning wouldn't have survived in Valhalla to become the savior and rescued all of humanity to move to a new world in Lightning Returns... so it kind of works out for the better in the end...

... I want a dimension where Vanille is the hero and we get to play as her throughout the entire game instead...

[ShadowX40]

Yeah, this game is a tricky web of timelines to weave through.

You really laid it out better than I understood when I played it.

Ugh, this hurts my head as much as Cell's DBZ timelines