Beth went left

[Nab]

Run for the hills if you want to avoid spoilers.

If you want to travel to the future, you go clockwise. If you aim for the past you go anticlockwise.
At the same time you enter a specific target date. I always translated that into "you enter a time difference which sends you to the right date if you travel the right direction"

Why did Beth turn to the left, goto-future, branch if she wanted to travel to the past?

[Solid Gamer]

if you walk though corridor you can see that some persons who already walked (those shadows or ghosts). Might be she saw someone (or herself walked in this direction) and she just followed. Sorry maybe am I wrong, I need to replay this game again if I have a possibility.

[Sgt Snoke Em]

maybe the Beth that died is from an alternate timeline somehow?...
(head pops)

[Inti]

Also at the start of the game, future paul serene that shows up in the current time emerges from the right, insinuating that he also turned left to go to the past initially.

[[TAG]Alblaka]

Originally posted by Inti:

Also at the start of the game, future paul serene that shows up in the current time emerges from the right, insinuating that he also turned left to go to the past initially.

Afaik he simply 'appears' in the main room outside of camera view.
(Albeit, if there is indeed a moment where you can see him coming in from the right, that's obviously a slip by the game creators. Since Paul explicitely points out, to himself, that he has to enter right and go counterclockwise.)

As to why Beth entered left, probably because noone actually told her how the time machine works in detail. It's entirely feasible that William/Jack/Sophia only told her she has to enter the corridor.
What's amusing is that in the few seconds (2-3) it takes for Jack to walk up the ramp, once the cutscene starts, Sophia somehow manages to move the ~1m distance to the console, rewrite the target, and notbe seen by the sidekick in doing so. Since, by that point, the corridor is opening, aka the machine is set to future.
Another thing, as Jack comes back down the ramp to yell at Sophia, the monitor still displays 2010 as target destination. I would assume this is a slip up,because otherwise it would imply that Sophia somehow managed to change the destination without the use of the only terminal designated to do that.

------WARNING MASSIVE SPOILER INSIDE OF SPOILER AHEAD------
Fun fact, pay EXTREMELY close attention to the people you encounter whilst traversing through the time machine. The figures will move in response to your movement, so you can move forth and back to get perfect shot at them.
Now, during this first time travel, you will pass by, in this order:
1. Beth ('young' version)
2. Beth ('old' version)
3. Paul ('young' version)
4. Hatch
1 is likely the Beth that went into the future by accident just a moment ago.
3 is likely Paul travelling back from the end to 1999.
(Funny tho, how he managed to repair 'this' time machine in the swimming pool, to travel back to it's 'past self' in the workshop, but without knowing that the time machine had been moved to the swimming pool (where he just had to repair it). My theory is that he found the time machine in a ENTIRELY DIFFERENT '3rd' location in the end, or the end time disruptions were so strong he couldn't identify the location,or he simply forgot about it. Or it was a slip-up by the devs, who knows.)
Now, 2 and 4 are super-interesting.
The note Hatch leaves for Jack to find in Paul's office (Given the closing words, I'm pretty sure it's Hatch), this implies Hatch is a time traveller (which is also hinted at throughout the story). Who, apparently, used William's time machine to travel to the future, at some point (ergo, 4).
But now the super-hit: 2.
Beth used that time machine, to travel into the future, AFTER spending 11 years in the past (she's clearing wearing the recognizeable hood). BUT according to the perceived events, she dies in 2010 whilst trying to retrieve the CFR. Ergo, Beth did not actually die there, but is (outside the scope of this game's storyline) somehow saved from what looks rather clearly like a headshot death.

Now, there is an amusingly simply explanation to some weird parts mentioned above, combined with the big hint of Paul's visions and time plan being off:
The end of time would never happen in 2016, because Jack 'prevented' it with the CFR, but at ~2020, exactly as Paul envisioned (and visited) it. Which means there's 4 more years of potential story explaining how above 'out-of-scope' things happened.

Currently on my 2nd playthrough for the 100%, gonna be paying extra attention when doing the second time travel in Act V to watch faces.

edit on the 2nd time travel:
2nd time travel contains a couple faces, i.e. Beth, Paul and (again) Hatch. However, it additionally contains a person with a MOHAWK, which applies to none of the characters I've seen ingame. Which means the person with the hood-cap thing, which I presumed to be 'old Beth', could potentially be an entirely new character, too.