: A question Forrest: How does the primary Marathon:Inf. timeline continue
: onward in Eternal when the Marine is physically jumping from timeline to
: time line with his ansible, trying to stop Hathlor (sp?) ?
Well, the "main" timeline that Eternal starts from is a failure timeline. It is most definitely not the timeline detailed in the M2 epilogue. I mean, we "won" the war, technically, but really we just sorta lost the least. The S'pht are extinct, K'lia is hanging dead in orbit over Earth, most of human civilization is wiped out. That's why you're going back to begin with. All of the time travelling that you do actually doesn't change anything (unless you take a failure branch of the story, but then you'll get to try again); it was already a part of the history you know.
: I read the Eternal outline back when you posted a link to it @ ForgHL... and
: that question has been nagging me for sometime. Is Durandal (in whichever
: encarnation he is when you leave) simply left scratching his digital head,
: wonderng where his marine went? Or is the players conciousness simply
: cloned into another timeline (a-la Inf. Electric Sheep levels) ?
I've still not completely worked out what happens after the last teleport of Eternal, but I'm strongly considering that the player just goes back to exactly where he left off - the end of Infinity. I never actually specify in the game when this Durandal/Thoth hybrid left the universe, so he could still be there at the end of Infinity going wherever it is that he's off to. Remember, he released the player at the end of Infinity - "Go." is the last word he says to us. I'm thinking that the player will go off with Robert Blake, or perhaps Durandal, and his presence will make a change in the war, and prevent the future that Eternal comes from. I don't think I'm going to answer any of these questions though, because they're not really relevant to the plot of Eternal itself. The only real unresolved plot point is, by the end of Eternal the player has fully realized his own ability to time-jump at will. Anything he does after that...
