Has Time Travel Ever Been Done Well?

[Moonface]

I was looking at the Tears of the Kingdom subreddit this morning during break and one of the posts on there brought up how Zelda would have gone through 10,000+ years of events, and it made me start thinking about how many problems that would cause. In particular, how do any of Zelda's other incarnations exist in the time prior to BotW if only one is supposed to be alive at any given time?

Maybe there's an answer to it that makes sense, maybe not, but remembering how many times I've seen time travel used in something I can't think of many instances where it doesn't just cause a ton of continuity problems. Back To The Future might be one of the rare cases it worked well?

[Maniakkid25]

Time travel is dangerous. Not "you'll cause a universe-ending paradox" dangerous. I mean it's a danger to the writer. It's very easy to mishandle, and can quickly cause problems. I truly have my doubts that ANY series has really done time travel well, and I'm INCLUDING stuff like Doctor Who and Back To The Future.

But my favorite bit of time travel "OOPS" comes from my second-favorite game of all time: Dark Chronicle/Dark Cloud 2. See, in the intro to the second chapter, you get immediately explained the stakes of the situation, and how Monica got to where you are. It is not a spoiler to say she is from the future. The problem this creates is that she explicitly states she has come back to the past to restore thr "Origin Points" of key locations that have otherwise been wiped from existence. This is fine... untill you think about it for more than 2 seconds. If she knows of their existence, then their past wasn't erased, and she has no reason to travel back in time. If their past was erased, she wouldn't know of their existence, and she has no reason to travel back in time.

Dark Chronicle is actually REALLY bad about its time travel, constantly playing fast and loose with memories with no consistent rules. The number of times that people just know things, and you magically need to accept that they would know things that they shouldn't is sky high, and yet its not like EVERYONE knows this stuff. If you talk to random villagers before you restore a place in the future, they will explicitly say stuff like "you know, it feels like there should be something here, but I don't know what..."! It's absolutely nuts!

[shadow]

Chrono Trigger has so many time travel endings that there's even a special game over ending with the developers in it. My favorite ending is where Frog marries Queen Leene.

[queenzelda]

Yea, Chrono Trigger has so many different endings that any of them could be a different out come if you think about it.

Another game I know of that includes time travel to some extent is Life is Strange where in it Max can rewind time and thus helps save Chloe's life. But depending on how you want it to end, the game just wants Chloe ded. Which is kinda sad impo, but the LiS universe is kinda f*cked up anyway impo. lol

[Moonface]

Time travel is dangerous. Not "you'll cause a universe-ending paradox" dangerous. I mean it's a danger to the writer. It's very easy to mishandle, and can quickly cause problems. I truly have my doubts that ANY series has really done time travel well, and I'm INCLUDING stuff like Doctor Who and Back To The Future.

I've only watched the two Doctor Who feature films which I don't think have any time travel, so can't give much input on that franchise but because I already felt unsure about it in my initial post, I am curious to know where BTTF goes wrong with its time travel antics. I want to assume it's gonna be the third part because my memory of the first two parts is that they constantly point out the problems time travel can cause and having to go fix it to put everything back to normal.

But my favorite bit of time travel "OOPS" comes from my second-favorite game of all time: Dark Chronicle/Dark Cloud 2. See, in the intro to the second chapter, you get immediately explained the stakes of the situation, and how Monica got to where you are. It is not a spoiler to say she is from the future. The problem this creates is that she explicitly states she has come back to the past to restore the "Origin Points" of key locations that have otherwise been wiped from existence. This is fine... until you think about it for more than 2 seconds. If she knows of their existence, then their past wasn't erased, and she has no reason to travel back in time. If their past was erased, she wouldn't know of their existence, and she has no reason to travel back in time.

Dark Chronicle is actually REALLY bad about its time travel, constantly playing fast and loose with memories with no consistent rules. The number of times that people just know things, and you magically need to accept that they would know things that they shouldn't is sky high, and yet its not like EVERYONE knows this stuff. If you talk to random villagers before you restore a place in the future, they will explicitly say stuff like "you know, it feels like there should be something here, but I don't know what..."! It's absolutely nuts!

I looked up the plot to give myself a little more context on things, and it says that Max gets told everything but Palm Brinks was destroyed 15 years ago, so can't Monica have learned about this destruction in the same manner? It doesn't seem like these areas and all knowledge of them was erased, just the areas themselves were.

Chrono Trigger has so many time travel endings that there's even a special game over ending with the developers in it. My favorite ending is where Frog marries Queen Leene.

Would you say it handles time travel well though? I've never played the game and know nothing about it to know that answer for myself.

[Maniakkid25]

I looked up the plot to give myself a little more context on things, and it says that Max gets told everything but Palm Brinks was destroyed 15 years ago, so can't Monica have learned about this destruction in the same manner? It doesn't seem like these areas and all knowledge of them was erased, just the areas themselves were.

It could, if she doesn't explicitly talk about things that only exist in the future as if they currently do exist. She is ALWAYS the one to explain that future creation of stuff from origin points even giving historic context, meaning that she knows what's going to be there despite it not existing in her timeline. And it gets even better after chapter 6. This one IS a spoiler.

Spoiler

When you finish chapter 6, the flying fortress Paznoz (don't ask) changes into a giant mecha. When Elena gives the order, THE GUY WHO DESIGNED IT says it was never in the plans, but it happens anyway because of your direct interventions in the timeline, and seemingly everyone else knows about it, because the order goes through with absolutely no other friction.

It is truly maddening the things that happen in this game. You really do have to play it to understand.

[Moonface]

I looked up the plot to give myself a little more context on things, and it says that Max gets told everything but Palm Brinks was destroyed 15 years ago, so can't Monica have learned about this destruction in the same manner? It doesn't seem like these areas and all knowledge of them was erased, just the areas themselves were.

It could, if she doesn't explicitly talk about things that only exist in the future as if they currently do exist. She is ALWAYS the one to explain that future creation of stuff from origin points even giving historic context, meaning that she knows what's going to be there despite it not existing in her timeline. And it gets even better after chapter 6. This one IS a spoiler.

Spoiler

When you finish chapter 6, the flying fortress Paznoz (don't ask) changes into a giant mecha. When Elena gives the order, THE GUY WHO DESIGNED IT says it was never in the plans, but it happens anyway because of your direct interventions in the timeline, and seemingly everyone else knows about it, because the order goes through with absolutely no other friction.

It is truly maddening the things that happen in this game. You really do have to play it to understand.

Ah, as in these things didn't even exist when the emperor destroyed their respective location, but Monica knows of things about that location that could only occur if it was never destroyed in the first place? If that's a correct understanding of it, then yeah, that makes absolutely no sense. It would be like Future Trunks in DBZ knowing Gohan will be the one to kill Cell yet the Future timeline has almost everyone dead because Cell wasn't stopped due to Goku dying of his heart virus.

Yea, Chrono Trigger has so many different endings that any of them could be a different out come if you think about it.

Another game I know of that includes time travel to some extent is Life is Strange where in it Max can rewind time and thus helps save Chloe's life. But depending on how you want it to end, the game just wants Chloe ded. Which is kinda sad impo, but the LiS universe is kinda f*cked up anyway impo. lol

I missed this post initially because you made it while I was still writing mine after yours.
I saw a discussion about LiS about a week ago where someone asked what characters in games make the dumbest choices, and were showing a scene of Chloe shooting a gun at a junk car and the bullet ricocheting back into her. Folks were explaining that the main reason the bullet actually ricochets is because Chloe cheated death and the universe is trying to fix it by any means even if that involves pulling Final Destination style antics, and even then that she doesn't need to be as concerned about doing reckless stuff because she knows it can be undone due to Max's time travel ability.