Overlooked Lines from Defiance

[The Hylden]

Originally Posted by TheSquid

You should all be ashamed of yourselves.

Of course there's no ripples in time after the gruesome heart rip. I said that before you did. (Search "Ripple-less.") It was an internal paradox which only changed Kain's insides, not the world at large, so the ripples in time were trapped within Kain's ribcage and reverberated back and forth inside him, giving him heartburn.

lol, it affects far more than Kain -- this act affects everything.

I'll try one more time to see if this registers, being as concise as I can about it:


Kain already has the memory of this timeline in his head from the end of SR2.

He already states to Raziel then that Janos will be raised and needs to remain dead.

The only way Janos is alive is being raised by the HoD.

In Avernus, Kain tells him not to use the HoD before the fight "Great harm will come of its use."

Janos's resurrection has already been written in time.

The only way Raziel could raise Janos is by ripping the heart from Kain. Kain's not going to tear it out of himself and raise Janos on his own. The quest to raise Janos has always been Raziel's.


Were this to BE a change on the timeline that only now does Raziel choose to tear out the HoD from Kain, this affects EVERYTHING to come. If it's a change, Janos is only now resurrected, which only now allows the Hylden Lord the vessel to possess to be used to power the gate that brings forth the invasion of the Hylden.... That's a lot of changin' going on...

Why do you think such a huge act is only confined to how it affects Kain??




This event is already written; nothing new happened in that fight. Raziel went to Avenus to get the HoD and he sure did.




On the subject of this thread's purpose: yes, it's about overlooked lines, but the lines offered so far have all had explanations either in the game, or have been discussed. As a courtesy, I let you know when that is the case. You disagree, and decide to debate it, which is where the debate about the lines comes from. Discussion about your lines is absolutely part of what this thread is about.



Ah, the wheel does turn. I am seeing it now

[Strands Of Night]

To Squid: Yes, I am ashamed and will continue to be so


To Hylden:

The moment that Raziel most exemplifies his free will in the entire series, if you're judging it by way of defying time's flow, can be found actually in SR2, where he spared Kain, despite time, his own self -- all forces pushing him to make that preset decision. As Raziel put it, "it took all the will I could muster."

But that doesnt count as Raziels free will because of the reaver paradox. Anyone can make a decision to alter time at that point.

The Squid said

That's why EG was surprised when Raz was able to escape the underworld at the beginning of Defiance. (After Raz decided he was getting the heck out of there).

That actually sounds like free will at work. This Prius isnt getting by!



To Vampmaster:

Free Will = Ability to disobey the EG.
Two Soul Reavers = Ability to change history.

So Kain has free will at the end of Defiance?
And the Hylden have free will because they defied EG's Wheel?
The Sluagh have free will as EG's spectral enemies who do their own reaving thing?
And ALL necro vamps have free will because, as EG says, "The birth of one of Kain’s abominations traps the essence of life. I can not spin them in the wheel of fate. They can not complete their destinies." Thus defying EG's will.



To Everyone:
In BO1 we alter history. There is no visual or acoustic cue to show that there has been a time change... No ripples. No reshuffle. And Kain doesnt even gain the new memories of the new timeline. He is just as suprised as the player when he finds out the new turn of events. Ripples, memories, and reshuffling are NOT required. However, the characters may still feel them even if the audience does not. Which would explain Kain's knowledge of what is happening in SR2.

Oh and Squid, I know your read all of this even though you didnt want to so here's a line from SR2 (not Defiance) that I think most people missed...

"Messianic delusions..." But I heard "Messy-antic delusions," missed the rest of the dialouge cuz I was all, "What?"

[majinkura]

Originally Posted by Strands Of Night

Oh and Squid, I know your read all of this even though you didnt want to so here's a line from SR2 (not Defiance) that I think most people missed...

"Messianic delusions..." But I heard "Messy-antic delusions," missed the rest of the dialouge cuz I was all, "What?"

actually I had heard that too...and i was all - outtake!!
man this whole thread (jokes)LOL

[The Hylden]

Originally Posted by Strands Of Night

To Vampmaster:


So Kain has free will at the end of Defiance?
And the Hylden have free will because they defied EG's Wheel?
The Sluagh have free will as EG's spectral enemies who do their own reaving thing?
And ALL necro vamps have free will because, as EG says, "The birth of one of Kain’s abominations traps the essence of life. I can not spin them in the wheel of fate. They can not complete their destinies." Thus defying EG's will.

Indeed. I am glad I didn't have to go back and edit to address this fully. The EG describes himself as the "hub" of his wheel of fate, so even as such, he's not the controller of fate. I very much doubt that he has power over everyone's fate, but simply takes in souls, then respawns them anew, where time has already written their fate to its course.

To Hylden:


But that doesnt count as Raziels free will because of the reaver paradox. Anyone can make a decision to alter time at that point.

On the contrary. No-one can make a decision to alter time at any point, save Raziel. Kain simply does what he's fated to do. In the battle against William the Just, Kain is fated simply to fight him. On the "original timeline," Kain does not succeed at killing him, as evident by the very existence of The Nemsis. Kain has a 50/50 shot at winning due not to his own actions, which are the same on both timelines, but due to Raziel. Two of the same free will souls duking it out, where one wins once, and the other wins the second time around. Kain is only the holder of the sword, not the controller of events.

In the second time Kain gets to act in a paradox, at the end of Soul Reaver 2, he's also only doing what he's fated to. He's fated to try only to pull out the Reaver. Interestingly enough, though, time has him fated to fail. He has to wait for the moment that Raziel loses strength and lets go of the sword. This is the moment Raziel is losing to his other self, and Kain is destined not to be able to stop the full absorption, which probably would have left him holding nothing but the Soul Reaver, calling in vein, "Raziel?" very much like he does at the end of Defiance. He only succeeds due to Raziel, who still has a 50/50 shot to hold out on his end long enough for Kain to succeed.

By contrast totally, the paradox in William the Just's Chapel. Raziel is the only being in existence that could do what he did there. He's fighting the "rush of history" (fate, time, destiny), and his own wraith blade self pulling for this to happen. He fights it all and chooses not to kill Kain, when he was supposed to choose to kill him as time had already written. You switch Kain in his place, hypothetically, with the wraith blade on his arm, and Kain would have no ability to choose anything, but would simply act on what he's fated to do.

As Raziel states, Kain gambled everything on the end moment of SR2, where he might be able to free Raziel, but this moment is the most crucial. He has to be alive to act then, and that means he had to convince Raziel to make this choice, to choose a new fate for everyone. As Moebius states later on in Defiance on duping our hero: "Ah but you do [have free will]. And there is the greatest triumph of all, to have compelled the one player who could choose into doing exactly what we required." The greatest triumph of all, to get a free will being to decide in your favor.

To Everyone:
In BO1 we alter history. There is no visual or acoustic cue to show that there has been a time change... No ripples. No reshuffle. And Kain doesnt even gain the new memories of the new timeline. He is just as suprised as the player when he finds out the new turn of events. Ripples, memories, and reshuffling are NOT required. However, the characters may still feel them even if the audience does not. Which would explain Kain's knowledge of what is happening in SR2.

Graphic limitations what they were, I doubt they could have had rippling anyway, but actually you do see shaking of the camera, a la reshuffling of events, when William falls. While you see this same shaking with every boss encounter, you can still use this visually as a similarity. Of note also, William's Reaver lies broken when he is killed (love consistency! ). When Kain explains the distortion of time and the reshuffling when paradoxes happen in SR2, he does so because he actually did go through it in the paradox here first. Having two timelines suddenly in his head, it probably would be confusing as hell to know what's going on and so him not commenting on it then as a fledgling vampire is more understandable, and then him later telling Raziel after figuring out it all from the Chronoplast and his millennia of existence.

[TheSquid]

nice concise, H. That's right, history already included the result we got from the hero fight: HoD --> Janos. That already happens on its own with no need for a paradox to bring ripples of change. That trips me up. The thinking behind the 'internal paradox' thing was reached by looking at only half the equation. Initially I thought I'd avoided the problem by going small with this paradox so as to leave history unchanged (with BO2 intact and the big ripple changes to history being tax-deferred until after EG was erased from time by Stealth Kain). Meanwhile the paradox would be used to explain how Stealth Kain arose at game's end. The way Stealth Kain blindsided everyone could perhaps be covered by saying he merely arose during an eclipse caused by Raz's free will, but the fact he was still breathing seems like an additional miracle Raziel couldn't account for. So, since a secret paradox was right there for the taking, I took to imagining it as an extra power source for the secret rebirth of Kain as the scion. (Because, @Kain: "Baby, you're worth it!") (This is just a new alternative. Usually I say it was the spirit forge's activation that resuscitated the nobleman, not a paradox.)

Where I tripped up was I also started picturing this paradox as changing history from the Defiance murals (sword through the heart) to the new outcome of a torn out heart. That I can't get away with. History has already been expecting the outcome Defiance gave us for some time now.

What's confusing is how the game tricks you into thinking the new ultimatum that's being set up for the heroes is REAL (1 must die in the fight), when really that isn't what's destined to happen at all. So in Defiance it looks like an opportunity exists for a paradox to come along and save the day by making the coin land on its edge during the fight--producing the 3rd outcome of the heart getting ripped out. (When really that's what's been fated all along, not as a paradox but as a Raziel free will act, only none of the characters knew it because Seers can't predict Raziel's wacko choices.)

This 'hidden paradox' idea of mine was also quaint because it would parallel how the BO1 paradox changed the outcome of another fight, only this time the paradox would be busting our heroes out of a trap instead of landing them in one. But I misjudged things. Defiance is too late for the coin to land on its edge! That already happened back in SR2: The hero fight's outcome was already set in place as a result of SR2 paradox changes. Ever since, Raziel has been scheduled to choose the events of Defiance---the heart rip-out followed by making the scion whole again with his sacrifice. So those "fight murals" have been outdated for a while. Moe & Elder still used that mural ploy because it was still their best move, and because they couldn't see the outcome clearly and so didn't know they were screwed. (Although it starts to look a bit silly when you realize EG & Moe's blind spot included ALL of the BO2 hylden invasion era, which only became apparent to them after Raziel actually put the heart back into Janos to cement his decision. If I had centuries go blurry on me like that as EG, I'd start tazering Raziel until he told me what he was planning.)

Anyway, by the time of the heroes' fight in Defiance it's no longer even possible for the 2 foretold outcomes in the murals to come true. (because one lethal stabbing would ruin the HoD and the other would leave it 'unfound' inside Kain, which can't be because it'd prevent BO2 from happening). The murals are an illusion, a distraction, a mind trick, something that's no longer fated to happen. Which means that neither of them were currently playing the role of champions like they thought! Even the silly revelation that Raz was both champions isn't really true. Nobody was nuthin' in this timeline. Not anymore. What we got in Defiance was like an unsanctioned boxing match. Sure, lots of freaky folks from several species were still trying to make the cancelled 'fight of the champions' happen. But that was just wishful thinking done by desperate dark forces. The heavyweight title wasn't really on the line in this fight, despite appearances. The real fight wasn't "back on" again. In reality, that foretold fight to the death had been permanently taken offline, removed from history, just as the original ending of SR1 was deleted where Kain was slated to die. As soon as Raziel refused to kill Kain in that SR2 paradox, he'd set course for the coin to land on its edge with that show-stopping heart ripper.


P.S. I'm fascinated by the Vampmaster/Strands thing about what free will really means. When V.Master said it meant the freedom to defy EG, I totally bought it. When Strands said a lot of people and things have defied EG or at least made a darn good show of doing so, I was like Whoa, That's true too. So this makes it even more difficult to define what Raziel's free will consists of on a normal day when there's no paradox. I guess was saw a good example of his "Tuesday afternoon freedom" when he grabbed at that heart, though.

@Series:

[Strands Of Night]

Squid: you were right... You are SO awesome.

Thats the way to think outside the box youre trapped in! I love how you looked at it all from an outside perspective, and not from the one-side-of-the-story narrative that we get from every bit of character dialog, and every bit of character driven narration. Its so easy to take what Raziel and Kain say as the truth, rather than just their version of the truth.

So who are the real champions? Is this a false prophecy? Or a Dark Prophecy? (I know, it was bad but i couldnt help it.) Perhaps the battle is still to come. Or perhaps it lies in some forgotten history ready to be revealed like the Heart.

And one small detail/correction. If Kain impaled Raziel at the boxing match, the heart still could have been discovered. Mortanius knew where it went. And so (assuming) did Moebius, since his Sarafan dogs went and fetched it for him. A secret that big wouldnt be forgotten to history so easily. Not that it would have been recovered, but it could have.

[The Hylden]

Originally Posted by TheSquid

nice concise, H. That's right, history already included the result we got from the hero fight: HoD --> Janos. That already happens on its own with no need for a paradox to bring ripples of change.

Hallelujah I am glad you agree. Heh, I knew you had some theory that this was helping.

As for the talk on the murals and what it means:

Remember, both of you, that when time is altered by a paradox, time alters both forward and backward. All of the loop of time gets changed -- the entire timeline --meaning that the past where these murals are made are foretelling this future, not any other that ever existed.

The reason then that Raziel was prophesied to be both champions and things are so wrong in those dual assumptions is heavily implied to be the same reason that Moebius foresees Raziel's actions as shadowy paths that he can't quite lock fully onto. Raziel's free will is the confusion here. There are dual visions that come about from his actions, and they were apparently misinterpreted to be from two separate beings. However, the reality is that both options do play out in the future, only in ways that weren't quite foreseen on either the vampires' or the Hylden's side, as explained here:

Raziel's prophesized arrival is interpreted differently by the Hylden and Vampires, because of their different points of view. In Amy's words, "As the Hylden champion, he destroys the Vampire messiah with his fiery sword (the Reaver) by sacrificing himself. And as the Vampire hero, he vanquishes the Hylden savior, by obliterating him(self) with the Reaver." As the Hylden champion, he is able to bring about their "release" (in a sense) by bringing Janos back to life. As the Vampire Messiah, he purifies the Scion of Balance insuring that the pillars are once more in the possession of the Vampires. His ability to fulfill both prophesizes is because he alone possess free will and was able to make those choices.

However, that "must fight" boxing match does have to happen and has. It's only been Raziel ... against himself, not Kain. That was never what was supposed to happen. Kain is never one of the foretold champions. It's the same reason for the paradoxes and why they happen at all: Raziel against himself. Visually, though, it sure does feel to you the first time like the vampire champion against his rival. Yet, we already should know now not to trust that Raziel could be from the enemy race. He's not a Hylden, after all.

One caveot to this, however, is that I do still believe that the original Time Guardian does know more than he put into these prophesies. As I've always said, I do not buy that the vampire blade is made to consume Raziel, and that the spirit vessels in the forges are made to empower, by way of spirit consumption, the "Hylden Champion's" weapon, all by mere "misunderstanding," or a bunch of happy coincidences. I think that the Time Guardian knew of more of the true outcome of things, so he set up, by way of these murals and vague prophesies, his people to ensure the Reaver was made as it is and the forges for their purpose.

Originally Posted by Strands Of Night

And one small detail/correction. If Kain impaled Raziel at the boxing match, the heart still could have been discovered. Mortanius knew where it went. And so (assuming) did Moebius, since his Sarafan dogs went and fetched it for him. A secret that big wouldnt be forgotten to history so easily. Not that it would have been recovered, but it could have.

Moebius, nor the Sarafan, would recover the heart and use it to raise Janos, so what difference does it make if they know where the heart is? Moebius doesn't have any interest in Janos being raised, nor the Hylden returning to Nosgoth, as evident on the timeline before the William the Just paradox. Kain died there at Raziel's hands and Janos stayed dead. Kain dying and being the last vampire in Nosgoth is Moebius' goal. He's never going to raise Janos -- of the ancients that he rebelled from and hates. The Hylden are a "mere inconvenience" to Moebius and the EG's plans, and not a design, nor wanted, consequence.

The only other person out there who'd care is Vorador, and he's dead at this moment. He'll only be raised after Janos is first.

[Mr.Milky]

This is our world, little demon. Run, little Raziel. Prepare to die!
Pathetic creature. Why should anyone know your name, Raziel?

Haha, they said this so that you be affected and start a topic. Those murky Hylden :}}