[SPOILERS] Questions about Paul, William and Jack

[Sun_S]

Three things either don't make sense to me or there aren't enough details to come to a conclusion:

Firstly, Paul and William at the beginning. It all starts with Paul creating the faulty time machine that William helped him build up to a point. I didn't get why Paul would even create that machine. In one of the texts scattered around the game, Paul writes that he had to hire scientists for Monarch because he doesn't have the skills to research on the Lifeboat solution (IIRC). Sounds like he's not a scientist at all, rather a businessman. I checked the Quantum Break wiki and there, too, all it says about young Paul before the first time leap is that he was just a good businessman.
So if that's the case, why would young Paul even be the one to build the machine?
Or did Monarch (his own company) hire him and make him the project lead so he could take care of the business side?
Also, why did William ever help him? He had had bad experiences with time machines: The first time he turned his on, Paul came jumping out and tried to shoot him (he wouldn't forget that, would he?). Plus Beth warned him of the fracture. Was he not smart enough to piece together it would come about because of another time machine? And if he was and he thought it has to happen (just like he tells Jack later that they cannot change what has already happened, only the future), why did he ever drop out of the project instead of taking his part in making the unavoidable happen?

Secondly, why on earth did Paul need Jack to help him start the machine? From a narrative standpoint, it makes sense. If Jack's not there, he doesn't develop his powers and doesn't have the motivation to take up the fight. But it has to make sense in-universe. Basically, all Paul wanted was someone to press a button (or turn a key? don't remember) at the same time as him. That could have been anyone. If we say "he needed moral support", well, there is no such talk being had: Paul doesn't talk about his fears (much) and Jack doesn't encourage him.
Plus, time was running out. He had been told that funding would be cut soon. But Paul is fine with waiting until his globetrotting friend has found the time to read his mails and taken a plane all the way back to the States. You'd think he'd be more worried about demonstrating the machine works ASAP.

Thirdly, Jack at the ending. What happens to him: We see William talk about how they fixed the fracture while Jack begins to partially disintegrate. Jump cut to Jack talking to Monarch: He's alive and fine.
What was happening to him and why is it better now?
My theory is that he must have chrononosis and is slowly turning into a shifter like Paul, because like Paul, he was doused in chronon radiation twice: Once in 2016 by the faulty time machine, once in 2010 at the Ground Zero incident. Seeing how it took years for the condition to worsen for Paul though, I suppose that was just the first sign of him having the condition.

[wyte boi]

Jack saved by Hatch for some unknown reasons because he's like g-man and his actions is unclear all the time

[Sun_S]

From what I gather by the message next to Serene's office, Hatch is a shifter. The end of time would be the place where he feels best (he likened time to an ocean and stopped time to an air pocket), so that's why he was secretly sabotaging Serene's attempts at finding a solution.

[Adhyan2332]

what game is it

[Buu Introspectivo]

You're mixing old Paul and young Paul.
Young Paul thinks Hatch is funding him to build a functional and researcheable Time Machine because William doesn't release the full data of the machine he "THEORIZES". Because the one he developed with the $150K prize he received together with Meyer he hid at the pool and pretend it doesn't exist due to Beth's warnings.
William is involved because he has a huge debt after building and replacing the time machine, plus building the countermeasure.
At first William thinks he is stalling, but Hatch wait to push young Paul to activate it at November 9th, 2016, much to William's surprise.

Young Paul need someone to turn on the machine, probably by old Paul's design, and it doesn't need much effort to conclude that Hatch convincing him to call his best friend Jack, so William doesn't freak out at his brother for turning the machine on, is a viable option to make the last push.

Hatch mention Paul, Dr. Kim and Jack as fellow Shifters in his anonymous message to Paul.

[Robbie738]

Originally posted by Adhyan2332:

what game is it

Scroll up.

[Jehauri]

For the third question, Hatch was a shifter- from what I can gather from a note late in the game, he traveled through a naturally-occurring time portal in a cave, which somehow gave him the same condition Paul had. When he succumbed to the sickness he became a shifter and was trapped that way until he reached the End of Time, where he found that the stillness enabled him to regain some of his sanity and control. I'm still a little fuzzy on how that works and on shifters in general, but I think his goal was to "evolve" humanity, or at least some humans, into shifters like himself by forcing them into the End of Time.
Regardless, his being a shifter explains how he could have survived: a note earlier in the game says that when a shifter is killed, only one version of them is dying and to truly kill one, you have to kill it over and over until it runs out of potential alternate timelines where it didn't die.

I've got a question of my own to add to these: If the End of Time was indeed averted, then how did Paul travel to it, realize it was a threat and start up Monarch? The game states, over and over, that if you see an event happen, that event is inevitable and anything you try to do to prevent it will just lead to it happening. Both Beth and Paul test this multiple times and are unable to circumvent it- Jack and William's parents still die, 9/11 still happens, etc., even though they know these events are coming and try to change them. Seeing the End of Time is the entire reason that Paul thinks the countermeasure won't work and is instead using it to power the Lifeboat, and the entire reason Beth loses faith in her mission. Does this mean Paul was right all along and the End of Time is still coming, possibly through a second fracture triggered by Hatch, or a re-opening of the first one? Was the countermeasure just a delaying tactic, and if so, why doesn't William, the ultimate expert on time travel, realize this? He seems VERY convinced that it's a permanent solution, but also shares the belief that observed events can't be averted, so how does he explain away what Paul and Beth saw?

[Sun_S]

Originally posted by Jehauri:

I've got a question of my own to add to these: If the End of Time was indeed averted, then how did Paul travel to it, realize it was a threat and start up Monarch? The game states, over and over, that if you see an event happen, that event is inevitable and anything you try to do to prevent it will just lead to it happening. Both Beth and Paul test this multiple times and are unable to circumvent it- Jack and William's parents still die, 9/11 still happens, etc., even though they know these events are coming and try to change them. Seeing the End of Time is the entire reason that Paul thinks the countermeasure won't work and is instead using it to power the Lifeboat, and the entire reason Beth loses faith in her mission. Does this mean Paul was right all along and the End of Time is still coming, possibly through a second fracture triggered by Hatch, or a re-opening of the first one? Was the countermeasure just a delaying tactic, and if so, why doesn't William, the ultimate expert on time travel, realize this? He seems VERY convinced that it's a permanent solution, but also shares the belief that observed events can't be averted, so how does he explain away what Paul and Beth saw?

I read a theory in another thread on here that said the end of time wasn't actually averted. If you look at the boards in Paul's company towards the end of the game, there is a timeline. I don't remember the details anymore, but what was confusing about it was that the end of time was scheduled for 2020 on there, not 2016.
IIRC other characters were talking about how everything was coming to pass earlier than they thought. But they must have actually been right: The "real" end of time was still to come, just as calculated, and Jack only delayed the effects of the fracture until 2020.
That is actually a depressing idea, but someone in the same thread maybe mentioned that even so it didn't have to mean that time would eventually end. What if what Beth and Paul saw really only lasted a few years and then the characters would have found a solution? We already learnt from William's not-death that while the characters couldn't make happened events unhappen, there was hope when their knowledge was incomplete and they just hadn't seen the conclusion of the event.
And it sure sounded like Paul had had the hope of finding a later solution; that he would keep a few smart minds alive and look for ways out of the problem from within the safety of the lifeboat. Maybe finding that elusive solution would have been the point of a sequel.
On that note, I wasn't even sure whether Beth was dead. All we saw was that Paul got to her eventually (IIRC), her lying on the floor, but who's to say that the sequel wouldn't have shown Jack arriving a moment later and taking her to hospital? We didn't see her body decay as it might have done if she had died and nobody had found her until days later.

[Sun_S]

Originally posted by Buu:

You're mixing old Paul and young Paul.
Young Paul thinks Hatch is funding him to build a functional and researcheable Time Machine because William doesn't release the full data of the machine he "THEORIZES". Because the one he developed with the $150K prize he received together with Meyer he hid at the pool and pretend it doesn't exist due to Beth's warnings.
William is involved because he has a huge debt after building and replacing the time machine, plus building the countermeasure.
At first William thinks he is stalling, but Hatch wait to push young Paul to activate it at November 9th, 2016, much to William's surprise.

Young Paul need someone to turn on the machine, probably by old Paul's design, and it doesn't need much effort to conclude that Hatch convincing him to call his best friend Jack, so William doesn't freak out at his brother for turning the machine on, is a viable option to make the last push.

Hatch mention Paul, Dr. Kim and Jack as fellow Shifters in his anonymous message to Paul.

I never replied to this, maybe I should. I'm actually aware that there were two Pauls, the young one who lead the time machine project and the old one who established Monarch from behind the curtain, with Hatch being the apparent man in charge, and that Monarch must have hired young Paul on purpose.
But you are right, it must have been that Monarch hired young Paul and asked him to build the machine for them according to their plans, rather than young Paul wanting to build it on his own, according to his own ideas, and then Monarch coming along and offering to help him with their resources.
Although that leaves us with an unsatisfying problem: If Monarch hadn't come along, Paul wouldn't have built the machine, because it was never his field of interest or expertise. So there isn't an original timeline in which young Paul caused the problem on his own, then a changed one where the problem still unavoidably happens, but this time old Paul gets involved, too. Or in other words, things in the game's present cannot happen unless the future has happened first, turning causality on its head.

[Rumple Blinskin]

Originally posted by Jehauri:

I've got a question of my own to add to these: If the End of Time was indeed averted, then how did Paul travel to it, realize it was a threat and start up Monarch? The game states, over and over, that if you see an event happen, that event is inevitable and anything you try to do to prevent it will just lead to it happening. Both Beth and Paul test this multiple times and are unable to circumvent it- Jack and William's parents still die, 9/11 still happens, etc., even though they know these events are coming and try to change them. Seeing the End of Time is the entire reason that Paul thinks the countermeasure won't work and is instead using it to power the Lifeboat, and the entire reason Beth loses faith in her mission. Does this mean Paul was right all along and the End of Time is still coming, possibly through a second fracture triggered by Hatch, or a re-opening of the first one? Was the countermeasure just a delaying tactic, and if so, why doesn't William, the ultimate expert on time travel, realize this? He seems VERY convinced that it's a permanent solution, but also shares the belief that observed events can't be averted, so how does he explain away what Paul and Beth saw?

This is my understanding, and don't have a real answer to most of it. Feel free to correct me if I am wrong/have missed something!

Also my storyline may be different to yours so bear in mind.

This is more of a factual analysis than the motivating factors of characters but do read if it interests you!

Theres a bit of a mystery within the game as to whether or not timetravel takes you to a different reality or through previous events within the same one, and also wether events can be changed within only one timeline or otherwise across all timelines/realities. Obviously we hear that 9/11 and jacks parents dying still happens when they time travel. Question is: are they in an almost identical alternate reality or the exact same one? Idk, but we know multiple realities are a thing because of entitys like shifters who are a prime example of beings that can both exists outside of the laws of time and also exists as multiple instances of themselves and experience infinite unique experiences. (more on that later). Maybe within one timeline, time stops but within others it doesn't.

ARGUMENT FOR TIME BEING FIXED PERMENANTLY
-
Shifters who exists in multiple instantaneous realities at once, and when not in a stutter experience every possible eventuality simultaneously, and as stated in the game can die multiple times (eg: Liam Burke killing Martin at the CFR room but we see him (Martin) in the end cutscene, and Paul coming back from death to prevent the time fracture from being fixed in the last mission). If this is the case, they are naturally breaking the law that would hold if all events that happened had to be consistent because clearly they have died in some existences and survived in others, which is the nature of shifters.

The question is, does this law apply only to shifters, and also is it restricted within one timeline or across all. From what i understand it would have to be only in one timeline, because both Martin and Paul come back from death and exist "outside of time". This is all speculation but as far as I believe, shifters as well as anyone who possesses Chronon abilities could potentially alter the events of time and potentially fix it in certain timelines.

In the final mission, Will who we take to be the most reliable source of information in the game says to Jack "whats already happened has to happen". Which made me think, technically in Paul and Jacks existence they haven't lived through natural time to get to the end of time in 2020 or whenever it was. Maybe they have the power to change the future that hasn't been physically experienced by them (which is subjective depending on which reality you exists in) but through time travel cannot change the past they have physically witnessed. What this would mean is they can maybe stop the end of time as they haven't lived through it.

ARGUMENT AGAINST TIME BEING FIXED
-
On the other hand, at the end we see Jack experiencing visions from the future (as Paul had after his second exposure to a Chronon blast) of the end of time right from when we think he has fixed it implying he hasn't changed anything. Jack may potentially be turning into a shifter himself. Potentially a new game may have been planned, as the final scene appears to be a junction to choose from as in previous missions. All speculation. All the science behind the game is theoretical and after watching Tenet recently you come to appreciate a lot of it is down to your own interpretation there's no right or wrong necessarily! Cant be proven as of yet.

[mind.warp]

Originally posted by Jehauri:

I've got a question of my own to add to these: If the End of Time was indeed averted, then how did Paul travel to it, realize it was a threat and start up Monarch? The game states, over and over, that if you see an event happen, that event is inevitable and anything you try to do to prevent it will just lead to it happening.

And by the end of the game, things still SEEM to fit that "time is fixed" theory (see below for notes on antagonist "choices"). (Note: it's been a while so I forget the names and the exact dates)

The "villain" witnesses a worldwide time-freeze that occurred about 5 years after the game took place: based on newspapers and such. Which caused him to take his steps.

However during the game, it looks like A time-freeze is about to happen "now" (5 years too soon). This EARLY time-freeze always "destined" to be prevented by the hero, so the MAJOR time-freeze would happen 5 years later.

So far, everything we saw in the game was quite a closed loop. As far as major events (with possible exceptions of the "choices" below)

+ Hero saw what LOOKED like his brother dying, but in fact was future-Hero saving him "off-camera"

+ Brother was told about the dangers of his machine from a time-traveling woman, who learned about the dangers from the Brother (indirectly)

+ The hero's love-interest kept trying to change the past after she got stuck there, but everything she tried would fail. Heck she even wound up being the person that gave herself a journal. SO she gave up and entertained herself with graffiti and voyeurism

+ Hero stopped the 'immediate' time-freeze, which means he didn't invalidate the future newspapers and such

etc.

Your "choices" as the antagonist (and supposedly eventually the protagonist)... like letting someone live and such... could very well be "fixed" as well. That even though could COULD choose A or B you always wind up picking the choice you picked. Kind of like going to the restaurant: sure you have a whole menu to choose from, but Time ALWAYS has you picking the chicken on that night. The difference being that the antagonist just knows what's gonna happen from his choice as a result.


So in the end, this whole game looked like a part of a series. That they would ultimately try to TRULY change the future by preventing the MAJOR time-freeze 5 years later and directly battle Hatch. I imagine in 1 or 2 games. But the game didn't do well enough to warrant the sequel(s)

How WOULD they stop it? No idea. My guess is it involves either sacrificing the hero or his brother, or maybe using his "time choosing" thing he starts to develop

[Alhazred]

Originally posted by Sun_S:

I read a theory in another thread on here that said the end of time wasn't actually averted. If you look at the boards in Paul's company towards the end of the game, there is a timeline. I don't remember the details anymore, but what was confusing about it was that the end of time was scheduled for 2020 on there, not 2016.

It's not just the timeline in Paul's office, there's a lot of dialog and notes referencing Monarch expecting the End of Time in 2020 four years after the fracture started, and they never figure out how to reconcile the inconsistency that the date Paul saw of the last functioning day at the End is not the date where they now see it happening. It's very clearly being set up from the beginning that the prophecy has a technicality nobody thought of, which is that because Paul's foreknowledge ends in 2016, there's nothing to say the fracture in 2016 won't be stopped only for a separate fracture to occur in 2020.

The solution, as mentioned in other posts above, is obvious: Paul and Beth spent so long at the End that it broke them, but it never occurred to them that without staying there for eternity, they have no way of knowing that it's literally permanent, and for all they know, it could have been fixed five subjective seconds after they went back into the past. It's the inverse of a popular twist on an Endtimes prophecy, where the date of the end comes and goes and is dismissed as incorrect, only because people assume that an "end" must be an instantaneous thing, whereas the prophecy has correctly predicted the irreversible start of an end that is still a ways away. So Paul is actually correct that it's possible to fix the End and restart time, it's just not his Lifeboat project that does it.

In many ways, the game is basically the entire Legacy of Kain series but massively compressed (I half-expect that a big plot-twist of QB2 would've been that time becomes vulnerable to change if a paradox is introduced.) You can't change the past and if you try it turns out your attempt to change it is already a part of what happened, but you also don't necessarily know what happened out of your sight, and that's enough wiggle-room to change the future.