At the very least, some version of
the events of SCLegends is now canon. I doubt we ever get an explanation as to how precisely that's supposed to work, but I'm not mad at choosing Iska to be the element brought forward.
As I've expressed before, Iska was a genuinely good character -- arguably one of the best in the franchise, and the one thing about SCLegends that deserves to find a place in canon, if anything did.
i can headcanon an explanation easily enough for how this Iska and that one could be "the same, except not." I mean, even if we conclude that Iska never momentarily wielded both Soul Edge and Soul Calibur (since the latter is supposed to have been with Xianghua), if we allow for his fight with Siegfried to have still taken place in Astral Chaos -- well, between that and his bond with/betrayal of Siegfried, that's all the reason Soul Edge would need to take notice of him and fashion a manifestation of itself after him.
As for this question:
That being said, our new Iska notes that Algol is unexpectedly "already awake," which we know shouldn't have been the case until Siegfried and Nightmare's clash at the Lost Cathedral in 1591. So, by any reasonable reckoning, between that and Zasalamel's change in motivation happening earlier, there's no chronicling the two series of events as the same historical record/timeline.
As I've expressed before, Iska was a genuinely good character -- arguably one of the best in the franchise, and the one thing about SCLegends that deserves to find a place in canon, if anything did.
i can headcanon an explanation easily enough for how this Iska and that one could be "the same, except not." I mean, even if we conclude that Iska never momentarily wielded both Soul Edge and Soul Calibur (since the latter is supposed to have been with Xianghua), if we allow for his fight with Siegfried to have still taken place in Astral Chaos -- well, between that and his bond with/betrayal of Siegfried, that's all the reason Soul Edge would need to take notice of him and fashion a manifestation of itself after him.
As for this question:
I think we have to consider the possibility of this group of eight manifestations of Soul Edge having always been in the original timeline, particularly since this seems to be our origin for Z.W.E.I.Is that a big enough divergence that it can't be ignored?
That being said, our new Iska notes that Algol is unexpectedly "already awake," which we know shouldn't have been the case until Siegfried and Nightmare's clash at the Lost Cathedral in 1591. So, by any reasonable reckoning, between that and Zasalamel's change in motivation happening earlier, there's no chronicling the two series of events as the same historical record/timeline.