As much as I love the KH series as is, I also love ripping apart its plot points and coming up with ideas I think would have flowed better. This, of course, is all retrospective suggestions.
One thing that I still can't completely wrap my head around from DDD is the complicated form of time travel Nomura chose to use. To time travel (or is it only travel back in time?), you must abandon your body and go back to a point in time where another version of you already exists. And you can't travel further into the future than the present. Seems simple enough, but did all those Xehanorts give up their bodies just to end up in the future for this battle? Isn't the "preset" time further into the future than their own time so they shouldn't be able to go there??
Anyway, I just wanted to come up with some alternatives other than time travel (which always seems to be a last resort when you have no other ideas)
Simple, new and improved clones.
Clones are an established thing in KH all the way back from CoM. Other than feeling empty and angsty over being a clone, Repliku seemed like a perfectly viable clone. Successful even. Xehanort wouldn't have been able to work out a few kinks and use Vexen's left over data to clone/bring back his existing selves?
Xion was a bit of a failure yes, but that's because they toyed too much with Sora's memories and were trying to split them up between Roxas and Xion and really made a mess of things.
I think Xehanort should have used the cloning system to bring back the versions of himself that would be useful. Braig, Xemnas, AnsemSoD, etc. But, there are a few issues with my suggestion:
#1: Why not make multiple copies of himself and just be done? Well, we can pretend when creating clones, you can only make one 'version'. Thus far, we've only seen 2 clones. One of Riku, and one of ... Sora's memories of Kairi.... but anyway, there's only been one. We can pretend he can only clone 1 Xemnas. Or 1 AnsemSoD. This kind of fits with Young Xehanort's statements in Tron world too, about copying worlds, data, copies of ones self, all that jazz.
So this would mean, even if he brings back past versions of himself via cloning, he would still need to fill in any spaces that are missing. This retains his need to recruit Sora and others like Isa. He can't just clone anyone or he'll end up with more Xion's.
#2: Are clones really all that intimidating? Well, if Xehanort took Vexen's notes and tweaked them a bit, the clones of people like Xemnas should be exact copies of how he used to be. If Xemnas is intimidating, then so too is his clone.
#3: Would Xehanort really be able to make his own clones? I mean, I don't know. The series keeps boosting him up as this curious scientist guy. Surely he could look over the remnants of Vexen's data (like Axel did) and come up with his own method of cloning himself.
One thing that I still can't completely wrap my head around from DDD is the complicated form of time travel Nomura chose to use. To time travel (or is it only travel back in time?), you must abandon your body and go back to a point in time where another version of you already exists. And you can't travel further into the future than the present. Seems simple enough, but did all those Xehanorts give up their bodies just to end up in the future for this battle? Isn't the "preset" time further into the future than their own time so they shouldn't be able to go there??
Anyway, I just wanted to come up with some alternatives other than time travel (which always seems to be a last resort when you have no other ideas)
Simple, new and improved clones.
Clones are an established thing in KH all the way back from CoM. Other than feeling empty and angsty over being a clone, Repliku seemed like a perfectly viable clone. Successful even. Xehanort wouldn't have been able to work out a few kinks and use Vexen's left over data to clone/bring back his existing selves?
Xion was a bit of a failure yes, but that's because they toyed too much with Sora's memories and were trying to split them up between Roxas and Xion and really made a mess of things.
I think Xehanort should have used the cloning system to bring back the versions of himself that would be useful. Braig, Xemnas, AnsemSoD, etc. But, there are a few issues with my suggestion:
#1: Why not make multiple copies of himself and just be done? Well, we can pretend when creating clones, you can only make one 'version'. Thus far, we've only seen 2 clones. One of Riku, and one of ... Sora's memories of Kairi.... but anyway, there's only been one. We can pretend he can only clone 1 Xemnas. Or 1 AnsemSoD. This kind of fits with Young Xehanort's statements in Tron world too, about copying worlds, data, copies of ones self, all that jazz.
So this would mean, even if he brings back past versions of himself via cloning, he would still need to fill in any spaces that are missing. This retains his need to recruit Sora and others like Isa. He can't just clone anyone or he'll end up with more Xion's.
#2: Are clones really all that intimidating? Well, if Xehanort took Vexen's notes and tweaked them a bit, the clones of people like Xemnas should be exact copies of how he used to be. If Xemnas is intimidating, then so too is his clone.
#3: Would Xehanort really be able to make his own clones? I mean, I don't know. The series keeps boosting him up as this curious scientist guy. Surely he could look over the remnants of Vexen's data (like Axel did) and come up with his own method of cloning himself.