How will the new timeline diverge from the old?

Doesn't Siegfried stab Soul Edge immediately after Raphael does -- i.e. Raph stabs it, weakening the sword and giving Siegfried a chance to fight Inferno inside Astral Chaos; Siegfried takes hold of Soul Calibur, which has been held in stasis by Inferno for several years at this point; Siegy emerges from Astral Chaos and does the stabby stabby?

I don't think the KMX trio were reunited at all during the events of SCII and SCIII. Soul Calibur got left behind and basically imprisoned.
That was murky. I would agree with this to a degree, seeing how they portrayed the events in SoulCalibur VI, but Xianghua still has Soul Calibur in her weapons list for SoulCalibur II, along with the Evil version that never really got explained, so it was my understanding that they got the band back together and tried again, were defeated (because Nightmare had gotten stronger, more than they expected), and Siegfried picked up Soul Calibur off of Xianghua and stabbed the weakened Soul Edge. SoulCalibur II probably had the worst story mode, even worse than SoulCalibur IV, because really, honestly, truly, it doesn't tell hardly anything about what is actually happening. It's hard to be absolutely certain, and the profiles in SoulCalibur III weren't really helpful either.

Also, do my eyes deceive me or are you coming around to the expectation that this new telling is going to diverge in drastic, overt fashion from the old soon? 👀
Not particularly, it's just entertaining the possibility. If you'll check in the DLC thread, you can see my true feelings on the matter, which haven't changed.
 
I'm not the only who kind of thinks the Conduit's existence is a deviation, right? Zasalamel said that every time he fought the Conduit, he could feel Algol's presence in the Astral Chaos and realized that Algol is alive. In 4, it was stated that Zasalamel originally didn't know Algol was alive prior to 4. There's that and how he claimed that judging by the movements of the Spirit Scales, based on the Conduit's actions, an alternate version of history had been created.

What I don't get is, what exactly did the Conduit do?
 
What I don't get is, what exactly did the Conduit do?
They did plenty. They stopped Azwel from bringing his plans to fruition and either saved Grøh or put him out of his misery, though my money is on his redemption being the canon choice, though it is also bizarre that there was a choice to begin with, with everything else being concrete and decided.

Libra of Soul is undoubtedly canon, home to many side events that weren’t big enough for Soul Chronicles, and so the Conduit being a hidden truth to history is both a deviation and also not a deviation, on the same level as Grøh and Azwel. It is debatable on whether or not they are new entities, thus a deviation, or they were always there, just kept out of the public view. Either interpretation is valid, though if you’ve paid attention to my posts, I lean towards the latter.

Zasalamel and Cassandra remain the only two characters so far to have direct contact with the future, so everyone else is just playing their parts as they did originally. And Cassandra even, still mostly remains the same, because she is keeping knowledge of her visit from her future self from everyone, even Sophitia. So you could even argue that this is also not new, should we find ourselves in a closed time loop scenario. Zasalamel, then, remains the outlier, no longer wishing for death, knowing of Algol’s resurrection before it happens, but you could even possibly say that he keeps so many things to himself in the interests of preserving and protecting the swords, this may also have been the original turn of events. I say that last bit with reservations, if anything is to come of a new history, Zasalamel will surely be the one to bring it. Otherwise, history seems destined to repeat itself.
 
They did plenty. They stopped Azwel from bringing his plans to fruition and either saved Grøh or put him out of his misery, though my money is on his redemption being the canon choice, though it is also bizarre that there was a choice to begin with, with everything else being concrete and decided.

Libra of Soul is undoubtedly canon, home to many side events that weren’t big enough for Soul Chronicles, and so the Conduit being a hidden truth to history is both a deviation and also not a deviation, on the same level as Grøh and Azwel. It is debatable on whether or not they are new entities, thus a deviation, or they were always there, just kept out of the public view. Either interpretation is valid, though if you’ve paid attention to my posts, I lean towards the latter.

Zasalamel and Cassandra remain the only two characters so far to have direct contact with the future, so everyone else is just playing their parts as they did originally. And Cassandra even, still mostly remains the same, because she is keeping knowledge of her visit from her future self from everyone, even Sophitia. So you could even argue that this is also not new, should we find ourselves in a closed time loop scenario. Zasalamel, then, remains the outlier, no longer wishing for death, knowing of Algol’s resurrection before it happens, but you could even possibly say that he keeps so many things to himself in the interests of preserving and protecting the swords, this may also have been the original turn of events. I say that last bit with reservations, if anything is to come of a new history, Zasalamel will surely be the one to bring it. Otherwise, history seems destined to repeat itself.
Well yeah, I know what the Conduit did. I meant, what specific action did they take? Them stopping Azwel and redeeming/killing Groh would have happened regardless for SC2, 3, 4 and 5 to have taken place to begin with, so nothing leading up to them fighting Groh would have really changed anything. I don't see how the Conduit going from the first mission to their final encounter with Groh altered anything. Either that or the Conduit is indeed a new entity, and Azwel was stopped by either Dion or Natalie.

And yup, I've read your posts. I'm personally 50/50 about wether or not they're new. On one hand, Zasalamel fighting them every now and then seems like something he would have done regardless. Assuming he didn't fight them because of his "future memories" telling him to do it, but idk.
 
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It’s hard to say. Originally, Grøh may have been the one to take down Azwel (obviously still failing), and the Conduit stole his spotlight. Grøh actually... doesn’t do much, if you notice, he’s there, he’s in a lot of scenes, but it’s like he’s a supporting role when he looks like a protagonist. It’s a bit strange. And the Conduit’s power drawing from the Astral Fissures reminding Zasalamel of Algol’s energy, that fluctuation of power may do something in the bigger picture. I’m sure we will get some answers in SoulCalibur VII, but that’s a ways down the road.
 
It’s hard to say. Originally, Grøh may have been the one to take down Azwel (obviously still failing), and the Conduit stole his spotlight. Grøh actually... doesn’t do much, if you notice, he’s there, he’s in a lot of scenes, but it’s like he’s a supporting role when he looks like a protagonist. It’s a bit strange. And the Conduit’s power drawing from the Astral Fissures reminding Zasalamel of Algol’s energy, that fluctuation of power may do something in the bigger picture. I’m sure we will get some answers in SoulCalibur VII, but that’s a ways down the road.

There's also the quote about how Zasalamel wasn't able to see the Conduit's future and entrusted the Spirit Scales because of that. That pretty much tells me that the Conduit is an anomaly right off the bat, With that being said, what you said about the Astral Chaos' powers altering things in the bigger picture makes sense since it's not bound by time. Alternatively, Zasalamel getting the Conduit to fight Zasalamel a couple of times and finding out about Algol because of the future memories is indeed what caused the discrepancy, but that would mean it was Zasalamel who caused the discrepancy and

this is gonna drive me nuts.
 
How about for a real divergence, because Cassandra teased the naming of Sophitia’s firstborn being either Deucalion or Pyrrha, what if Sophitia actually has a son first this time, and so he is Deucalion, and then she has a daughter named Metameleia second?
 
How about for a real divergence, because Cassandra teased the naming of Sophitia’s firstborn being either Deucalion or Pyrrha, what if Sophitia actually has a son first this time, and so he is Deucalion, and then she has a daughter named Metameleia second?
It would certainly be a means of announcing the timeline has conclusively diverged, but I don't see it happening. It's virtually unheard of for even otherwise good sci-fi stories with time travel/alternate realities to recognize the fact that once things have changed for even a fraction of a second, no single offspring will ever be born who would have the same genetic make-up as the child that was "avoided", since every person is the result of a randomized combination of their parents' genetic material, which combination is set at the moment of conception, and therefor the possibility of the same exact person (in terms of genetics) being born from two random combinations at different moments in time is astronomical/effectively impossible. And in fact, even if it did happen, you'd still end up with a different person due to epigenetic factors in utero.

Nevertheless, virtually every split timeline story ever made ignores this fact and allows for the same cast of characters to exist, just walking through different combinations of events. So we come back to a question that has been raised here more than once: is SoulCalibur going to be a story that bucks the trend and handles these kinds of plot mechanics with much more subtlety and nuance? Well, I think it all depends on--NAH, I'm just joking! No, there is no chance of that. We will see Pyrhha and Patty again at some point, I am sure.
 
I wonder if the game is hinting at Olcadan with the sealed corridor. But unless he and Edgemaster are going to share the same template...I don't understand why the sealed corridor is an Edgemaster stage? I don't understand why the three Edgemaster stages would be connected and Olcadan would be trapped in the corridor
 
I wonder if the game is hinting at Olcadan with the sealed corridor. But unless he and Edgemaster are going to share the same template...I don't understand why the sealed corridor is an Edgemaster stage? I don't understand why the three Edgemaster stages would be connected and Olcadan would be trapped in the corridor
It definitely seems to be a reference to Olcadon, even having his disciple Boris from Broken Destiny mentioned in the lore.
 
It definitely seems to be a reference to Olcadon, even having his disciple Boris from Broken Destiny mentioned in the lore.
Where in the game was that? In any event, I think it is highly doubtful that Olcadan would make an appearance, though I've said it before and I'll say it again: I think that PS would buy a fair bit of fan gratitude by the simple gesture of creating models for Edgemaster, Olcadan, and Charade and sticking them on their own shared mimic tab on the character select. But at this stage in development, I think we'll be lucky to see just Edgemaster (hopefully? eventually?).
 
Was in the... I wanna say Library? description of the stage. Whatever the archive section was called. Been a while since I played.
Boris can be created as well. But I think they are just dragging the lifespan of the game at this point. I have no worry that every previous timeline character and some future will be added as dlc.

but back to the point it’s not that Olcadan will appear on the game. It’s why a stage that’s connected to Edgemaster have owls in the tile?
 
It’s just alluding to Olcadan’s lore, confirming he still exists in the present “reboot”. That’s how I take its meaning. As if there were doubts, since nearly everything else is practically identical.
 
It’s hard to say. Originally, Grøh may have been the one to take down Azwel (obviously still failing), and the Conduit stole his spotlight. Grøh actually... doesn’t do much, if you notice, he’s there, he’s in a lot of scenes, but it’s like he’s a supporting role when he looks like a protagonist. It’s a bit strange. And the Conduit’s power drawing from the Astral Fissures reminding Zasalamel of Algol’s energy, that fluctuation of power may do something in the bigger picture. I’m sure we will get some answers in SoulCalibur VII, but that’s a ways down the road.
So after a while I did a bit of thinking and came to the conclusion that Zasalamel doesn't actually have the ability to look into the future whenever he wants to: He's constantly looking into the future memories sent to him by his future self, who left the Conduit out of the picture. Because Zasalamel didn't see the Conduit's future, he entrusted the Spirit Scales, and they are the objects that caused the Conduit to change history. With them, the Conduit was able to cause Zasalamel to, through the Conduit, sense Algol's presence and realize he's in fact alive in the Astral Chaos and not dead. It seems like something Zasalamel's future self would to in order to steer his past self into a different direction, assuming he wasn't able to become properly immortal towards the end of SC4. Just a theory though.
 
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I dunno about Zasalamel not being properly immortal at the end of SoulCalibur IV, considering he's been an immortal since the ancient times, and his ending in SoulCalibur IV showed him looking like he just came straight out of Tekken with his helicopter, business suit, and personal assistant. But the rest of that sounds pretty good. I still mostly feel like everything remains to be seen, and it's anyone's guess right now, but good theory.
 
I dunno about Zasalamel not being properly immortal at the end of SoulCalibur IV, considering he's been an immortal since the ancient times, and his ending in SoulCalibur IV showed him looking like he just came straight out of Tekken with his helicopter, business suit, and personal assistant. But the rest of that sounds pretty good. I still mostly feel like everything remains to be seen, and it's anyone's guess right now, but good theory.
Sorry, I meant "properly immortal" in that he can't die at all instead of being reincarnated while feeling like his soul is being crushed every time he dies, a pain that got worse and worse every time he would die.
 
Ah, fair enough. I was just confused, like he lost his immortality from his trials with Abyss and Night Terror somehow, was how I was thinking you meant.
 
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