A thought about Lightning's and everyone else's age [trilogy spoilers inside]

[it's a gabe]

I was thinking... Wikia says most of them are 500-ish years old, including Lightning (521). But if we (or at least I) look back into the chronology of the XIII series, she should be much much older than that if they're also counting the time she spent in Valhalla.

She was 21 in XIII and LR takes place 500 years after XIII-2, but XIII-2 doesn't end in the early years after the fall of Cocoon. The final dungeon is located between 500 and 700 AF (inside the paradoxal timeline), I don't quite remember. However, after the events in Valhalla, Serah and Noel go back to Academia in 4XX AF. As anyone who played XIII-2 knows, the X in some places is an approximation, so that could be any year inside the fourth century after the fall of Cocoon. LR takes place approximately 900 years after the fall of Cocoon (in XIII, not in XIII-2), meaning Lightning could be nearly or more than a 1000 years old if we're counting the time she spent in Valhalla.

I'm certainly getting out of my way here, but did Square overlook this simple detail during promotion or did I miss something? I didn't read any of the novels, so I did probably miss something... Oh, like Snow becoming a l'Cie again? That's explained in that novel after XIII-2, right?

[PerfectLife]

The problem is there's so much timeywimey nonsense in the 13 series the age of any character really has no meaning whatsoever even if you could figure out the correct number, I'd think.

[Agent Nahman Jayden]

Well time was disrupted so Lightning disappeared as soon as the ending for FF13 happened. The others, I got no clue.

[RedHawk5255]

Xiii-2 took place 3 years after the fall of cocoon. So that would add to lightnings age unless she never ages in Valhalla cause there is no "time" in Valhalla...

[Clord]

It gets complicated.

Caius Ballad made a mess of things so I wonder what would happen if Lightning killed Noel before he kills Caius like an idiot.

Whole chaos mess is thanks to certain Noel who refused to become next servant or whatever it was.

[it's a gabe]

I just had a brief discussion about this on Reddit and the person there explained to me that Lightning's age might be correct bc of what happened after the end of XIII-2. That might, however, be a spoiler to LR. Just know that it has to do with the Wildlands.

Hope's and Fang's ages add up, but not Snow's (he's around 500yo in LR even though he existed throughout the same reality for over 500 years) and I always find Noel's odd, cos he came from the future and he's a paradox in LR.

[♡ ディズィー ♡]

Originally posted by caelumsixsmith:

I was thinking... Wikia says most of them are 500-ish years old, including Lightning (521). But if we (or at least I) look back into the chronology of the XIII series, she should be much much older than that if they're also counting the time she spent in Valhalla.

She was 21 in XIII and LR takes place 500 years after XIII-2, but XIII-2 doesn't end in the early years after the fall of Cocoon. The final dungeon is located between 500 and 700 AF (inside the paradoxal timeline), I don't quite remember. However, after the events in Valhalla, Serah and Noel go back to Academia in 4XX AF. As anyone who played XIII-2 knows, the X in some places is an approximation, so that could be any year inside the fourth century after the fall of Cocoon. LR takes place approximately 900 years after the fall of Cocoon (in XIII, not in XIII-2), meaning Lightning could be nearly or more than a 1000 years old if we're counting the time she spent in Valhalla.

I'm certainly getting out of my way here, but did Square overlook this simple detail during promotion or did I miss something? I didn't read any of the novels, so I did probably miss something... Oh, like Snow becoming a l'Cie again? That's explained in that novel after XIII-2, right?

While Lightning is acting as the Knight of Etro (XIII-2) the concept of time and effects of time has little to no effect her as she's a champion of the Goddess. She slept in a crystal form (Statis) after the events of XIII-2 in attmpets to atone for her sin in a manner of speaking Killing Serah. With the Chaos eroding and eating the world the aging process on the inhabitants of that world has stopped and the only way to die is to get killed by monsters, murdered or die from an illness.

As for Snow being a L'cie again it's revealed during XIII-2 that he took on crest so he could look for Lightning though his Focus isn't mentioned. It can be assumed that his new focus is either to protect Pulse from collapsing (Which would explain him being at the King Flan fight) or it could be a hidden agenda. Though it would seem that in this game that he's failed it and has spent the past 500 years fightning against the Crest's curse to become a Ceith.

Hope's age regression is due to him being brought back from the future/back to life just in a new body from Bunzelhoweverhisnameisspelt.

[it's a gabe]

Oh, I know all that. I never meant the physical age at all, I meant the numbers. Also, it's explained in one of the novellas that Snow met a Cactuar fal'Cie and became its l'Cie for a reason I can't remember. They traveled through time together, but were separated sometime before the Royal Ripeness fight and according to the novella, Snow never saw him again. The pact Snow has in LR is with Pandemonium to protect Yusnaan (I'm not sure if that's explained in the datalog or in Tracer of Memories). He completed his focus with the Cactuar fal'Cie a long time before LR and became the l'Cie of Pandemonium to become the Patron and stop the Order from monopolizying the food supplies of Nova Chrysallia.

But the age (number) thing have been discusses already :) Turns out at least most of them are accurate according to wikia. Now that I think about it, Snow might also be slightly accurate since he spent time in the Coliseum.

[Faint]

Lightning is a lot older because she was fighting in a time warp for a ridiculous amount of time. The age in wiki I assume is based off of how much time passed in the world and not how much time passed for her herself since the story kind of skipped over that part in the second game. Whats more interesting is how old Vanille and Fang are compared to everyone else since they were old school since the first game.

[it's a gabe]

Valhalla is a timeless place, though. So even though she spent gods know how many time there, she's not supposed to age. Also, the time in the physical world is what counts and Valhalla is more of a spiritual world. Then comes the example I gave from Interstellar, which if taken seriously makes the ages in LR quite odd. According to that logic, everyone should be over 1000 years old, not just Hope (since he slept up until 400-500 AF to meet Serah and Noel). Lightning should also be over 1000 yo. It's also valid to consider that Interstellar had scientists working with the plot to make it closer to reality, while LR just had game developers.

[Faint]

Originally posted by caelumsixsmith:

Valhalla is a timeless place, though. So even though she spent gods know how many time there, she's not supposed to age. Also, the time in the physical world is what counts and Valhalla is more of a spiritual world. Then comes the example I gave from Interstellar, which if taken seriously makes the ages in LR quite odd. According to that logic, everyone should be over 1000 years old, not just Hope (since he slept up until 400-500 AF to meet Serah and Noel). Lightning should also be over 1000 yo. It's also valid to consider that Interstellar had scientists working with the plot to make it closer to reality, while LR just had game developers.

Well first you can't relate Interstellar to this universe because the rules are different. As for Lightning you're thinking genetically and I'm thinking mentally; she may have stopped aging same as if she were crystal but that doesn't make her any less aged and experienced after going through all that she did. Your also forgeting that time went haywire during the second game meaning people stopped aging between the second and third game, before that they were aged normally so Hopes age didn't change at all compared to anyone elses and only Sera and Noel (and Snow IIRC) went out of sync during those instances. The Hope that slept is not the same Hope in this game either, that was just one of many possible Hopes and this games timeline has little to nothing to do with the previous title since everything went to ♥♥♥♥ at the very end of FFXIII-2 thanks to Caius...

[it's a gabe]

My logic is that if Interstellar is meant to be realistic, then the age counting in LR is wrong. The game plays with time travel and tries to be slightly accurate with it, with all its alternate timelines and everything, so I don't see how much different that is from actual science (except there was no scientist involved in the development as far as I know). And no, I'm not thinking genetically. Never did. I have always meant the numbers with this post, not how they should look. For some reason Snow and Noel stopped aging (stopped having anniversaries, not genetically aging and the confusion might come from language barrier since English is not my first language) because they travelled through time, but if we take the logic in Interstellar (again, I'm using this example bc the movie is supposed to be realistic, not bc it's there) we're still supposed to count the years they've been travelling, making them more than 1000 years old. Same goes for Lightning as she spent time in Valhalla, but time went on normally in the mortal realm.

And everyone had birthdays since the end of XIII-2. Wikia marks Snow and Lightning as being over 500yo, for example. And that's not why the Hope in LR is the 14yo one we know from XIII. LR doesn't play with time travel or multiple realities (not even when it comes to Yeul), so that wasn't a Hope from another reality.

[Faint]

Originally posted by caelumsixsmith:

My logic is that if Interstellar is meant to be realistic, then the age counting in LR is wrong. The game plays with time travel and tries to be slightly accurate with it, with all its alternate timelines and everything, so I don't see how much different that is from actual science (except there was no scientist involved in the development as far as I know). And no, I'm not thinking genetically. Never did. I have always meant the numbers with this post, not how they should look. For some reason Snow and Noel stopped aging (stopped having anniversaries, not genetically aging and the confusion might come from language barrier since English is not my first language) because they travelled through time, but if we take the logic in Interstellar (again, I'm using this example bc the movie is supposed to be realistic, not bc it's there) we're still supposed to count the years they've been travelling, making them more than 1000 years old. Same goes for Lightning as she spent time in Valhalla, but time went on normally in the mortal realm.

And everyone had birthdays since the end of XIII-2. Wikia marks Snow and Lightning as being over 500yo, for example. And that's not why the Hope in LR is the 14yo one we know from XIII. LR doesn't play with time travel or multiple realities (not even when it comes to Yeul), so that wasn't a Hope from another reality.

Not 100 percent where you are going but the Hope you see in this game was a doll and not the real Hope so using him in any example is flawed for both cases. Snow was explained by being L'cie and that goes for a few other characters but Noel is different, he was ageless because of his duty to Yeul as her knight or guardian or whatever he was same as Caius.

[NuhUh]

Hope and Noel's story doesn't add up for me. We all know in LR, that was not the real Hope but Bhunivelze. So I have to assume, in XIII-2, Hope died along with Serah and the rest of the world. If this is the case, then why is Noel still around in LR?

Based on XIII-2, Noel shouldn't even exist in LR. He's a time line contradiction that has been sorted before Serah's death. So, why is he still around post XIII-2? Even if we assume Noel contradiction was not corrected, then he should have died with end of world in XIII-2.

[it's a gabe]

The Hope we meet in LR is not quite a dummy. That's the actual body, but Bhunivelze discarded the soul. And the wikia says Hope has more than a thousand years in LR, which is not entirely wrong. He was probably not physically alive when the end began, but he was alive for a few centuries after XIII-2.

There's actually no explanation as of why Snow is marked as over 500 years instead of a thousand. What I assume is that they're not counting the entirety of XIII-2, during which he spent travelling through time. Comes the theory presented in Interstellar and why I think that's wrong. Noel was never immortal, btw. He was Yeul's guardian, but he was not ageless at all. Also, he have always been a paradox, especially in LR since he's not supposed to exist then. Noel's age is odd to me bc he's from the future and while he was 18 when he arrived in New Bodhum, he wasn't even supposed to exist in 99% of XIII-2 and the entirety of LR.

[it's a gabe]

Originally posted by NuhUh:

Hope and Noel's story doesn't add up for me. We all know in LR, that was not the real Hope but Bhunivelze. So I have to assume, in XIII-2, Hope died along with Serah and the rest of the world. If this is the case, then why is Noel still around in LR?

Hope survived. It's explained in LR that he united with Snow, Sazh and Noel to rebuild the world. His presence was what made the Order behave and after he disappeared they became a theocracy in Luxerion.