Dark Road ► Xehanort leaving Destiny Islands and the Time Paradox

[Justjack91]

So Dark Road has finished and I just gotta say I am STILL years later not satisfied with the explanation of how Xehanort managed to leave Destiny Islands.

So as a quick reminder: Ansem, Seeker of Darkness (Terranort's heartless) is implied to have helped Young Xehanort off the islands in some shape or form via a dark corridor. This either was when he was sent to do his time traveling to get his other selves, when he was sent directly to Scala and he did his time traveling later, or both. It's only shown in the intro cutscene for Dark Road.

HOWEVER, how did his future self even manage to leave the islands in the first place? We are given no context and you'd think for some minor continuity on things this would have been easily resolved at the very least in Dark Road. But no, we are just left to assume his one and only way off the islands was by a version of himself that ALREADY got off the islands.

I can't tell anymore if this is just whimsical storytelling in the form of a paradox or if this is an oversight by Nomura, but I am disappointed if this is never touched upon again. Maybe with Missing Link something will come out of it, but COME ON. Why does this have to be so mysterious.

I'm just at a loss. Why have they made this so convoluted? They show very clearly how other characters manage to off themselves from DI, so why is Xehanort so needlessly complicated? Why couldn't the Blue Hooded Figure just do it themselves for sanity's sake?

That's all I have to say. I Google search for this and there's so few people that post/discuss this and I really feel like this rough storytelling that has been plot relevant for several current games is frustrating.

 

[Dandelion]

I feel you. Every bit of what you're saying and so much more.
BUT, if you talk about this, there's a chorus of people who say "oh, well,that doesn't bother me," or "well, EVERYTHING Is a CoNtRaDiCtIoN wHeN yOu ThInK aBoUt it."

Like, no, it's not. Dark Road just fucked around with everything all fast-and-loose and has a disappointing story that contradicts a lot of the story that came before it. Not even in a compelling way.

 

[Chie]

I can't tell anymore if this is just whimsical storytelling in the form of a paradox or if this is an oversight by Nomura, but I am disappointed if this is never touched upon again. Maybe with Missing Link something will come out of it, but COME ON. Why does this have to be so mysterious.

Have you not seen stable time loops in fiction before? There was no "in the first place", it all happened the only way it ever happened. I didn't think this was a mystery.

Xehanort's entire life is a bunch of these. Not only could he not leave the island unless he helped himself leave the island, but he also wouldn't have helped himself leave the island if he hadn't had his future etched into his memories from the time travel. He's forced to become his adult self because he already became his adult self in the future. It's his Destiny, if you will.

 

[Sonofjafar]

So Dark Road has finished and I just gotta say I am STILL years later not satisfied with the explanation of how Xehanort managed to leave Destiny Islands.

So as a quick reminder: Ansem, Seeker of Darkness (Terranort's heartless) is implied to have helped Young Xehanort off the islands in some shape or form via a dark corridor. This either was when he was sent to do his time traveling to get his other selves, when he was sent directly to Scala and he did his time traveling later, or both. It's only shown in the intro cutscene for Dark Road.

HOWEVER, how did his future self even manage to leave the islands in the first place? We are given no context and you'd think for some minor continuity on things this would have been easily resolved at the very least in Dark Road. But no, we are just left to assume his one and only way off the islands was by a version of himself that ALREADY got off the islands.

I can't tell anymore if this is just whimsical storytelling in the form of a paradox or if this is an oversight by Nomura, but I am disappointed if this is never touched upon again. Maybe with Missing Link something will come out of it, but COME ON. Why does this have to be so mysterious.

I'm just at a loss. Why have they made this so convoluted? They show very clearly how other characters manage to off themselves from DI, so why is Xehanort so needlessly complicated? Why couldn't the Blue Hooded Figure just do it themselves for sanity's sake?

That's all I have to say. I Google search for this and there's so few people that post/discuss this and I really feel like this rough storytelling that has been plot relevant for several current games is frustrating.

So Xehanort DID screw up the timeline. I knew it!

 

[Justjack91]

Have you not seen stable time loops in fiction before? There was no "in the first place", it all happened the only way it ever happened. I didn't think this was a mystery.

Xehanort's entire life is a bunch of these. Not only could he not leave the island unless he helped himself leave the island, but he also wouldn't have helped himself leave the island if he hadn't had his future etched into his memories from the time travel. He's forced to become his adult self because he already became his adult self in the future. It's his Destiny, if you will.

I feel what you're saying, but that doesn't mean I approve of those stories for doing that either.

It's more compelling in say Avengers: Endgame's form of time travel with Steve at the end. It doesn't REALLY make sense why he would be sitting on a bench and not return on the teleporter. Was he in a branching timeline? Was he always going to end up on that bench? Some of the rules of that movie contradict the decisions they made there...but is it narratively satisfying to know he got his time with Peggy Carter? Heck yeah it is.

Sometimes I have my beefs with how Back to the Future handles their time traveling, but because it's shown in a narratively satisfying way, I can look past it.

This doesn't take away from my love for the series (I'm legit following everything in this series still and have been since 06). I still think Dark Road is a solid and interesting story for the most part.

I just feel like these contrived narrative decisions are worth noting (at the very least so I can vent about it). I'm the guy that still gets upset over the fact there's a truck toppled over in the TWTNW and we STILL don't have an explanation for why it's there, why it is in that state, or what is beyond that path. Akin to a "Mew under the truck" kind of wonder/frustration. Doesn't mean I don't love the world of TWTNW or KH2 or the stories around them.

I just want my story to have better closure is all. I'll live with this "closed time loop" logic, but it'll always feel like a cop out for what could have been a more satisfying answer (or at least more logical one).

 

[Chie]

It makes a lot of thematic sense to me, because even outside of Xehanort's own time loops, he also exists within the Master of Masters'. MoM looked into the future, saw the events of the series, wrote them down, gave it to everyone as a religious text, and then everyone's reactions to this text created the future that the Master of Masters saw in the first place.

In other words, all of Kingdom Hearts up through where the Book of Prophecies ends exists in in the same "pre-ordained by narrative causality" condition as Xehanort; the difference is that Xehanort self-inflicts this upon himself on an even further layer. And Xehanort's loops all resolve at the end of his life, in the conflict which is also where the BoP ends.

As a footnote, a lot of this thematic ground is also tread in Homestuck, including "alt-author" characters like the MoM who encircle the world in their own fiction. It also kinda makes sense with the general Abrahamic overtones of KH, invoking the question of whether we can be said to have free will if a so-called God (MoM) already knows exactly what we're going to do.

 

[Squood!]

Frankly I'm just trying to wonder if you meant Ansem when you wrote "future self" because if you did he kinda just...chose to stay hidden in the islands probably popping a dark corridor here and there whenever other people started showing up.

 

[palizinhas]

I mean, Xehanort has been a stable time loop since DDD. Everything he did was because he had already done it.
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