Crystal Pool post credits scene (MASSIVE spoilers)
I'm not kidding about the spoilers y'all so if you don't want to see any then back out now.
Also there's a chance that everything I say could be either confirmed or negated by the epilogue in a few days but eh.
big spoilers plz pay attention
OK SO!
Unless the epilogue has some part where either we or, somehow, the AI, go back to before the start of the game and put the Scarlet/Violet book back in the lighthouse before Arven can find it during his quest to save his dog, then that can't possibly be the same professor from our timeline. And even if that was to happen it still couldn't be the same one because the order of events they mention don't line up with what we know from the journals in the research stations. The one from our world had talked about Arven's birth and the paradox dragon basically coinciding, and then a later entry describes how "that man/that woman walked out soon after the boy was born". Yet the one we talk to has already had Arven and describes him as their only family, meaning the other one has already left, and yet they had never met the paradox dragon.
We know the one from our world obtained the white book somehow, but unless the aforementioned further time travel happens at some point, we also know they didn't trade their own book for it. They had programmed it into the machine (that's still in the planning stage for the one we meet) as a failsafe, meaning they almost certainly had to have had it on hand when they did so, and then it was there in the lighthouse as I said.
People seem to think that we doomed the professor by giving them this book but I don't think we did. I think we saved them. They seemed to be saddened by the idea that Arven would be alone, despite seeming to view this as inevitable, but before they leave, they say that maybe they'll go home to enjoy their new book. These parts juxtaposed with each other make me wonder if maybe we didn't just give them the means to change their minds, to pull back and rethink what they were doing. We also sparked the idea to create an AI assistant, so perhaps they built them earlier than in our timeline, thus allowing themselves to pull back and let the AI do most of the project. Rather than feeling like a prisoner in the crater, the AI would be more able to indulge in the happiness of discovery and scientific advancement, and they wouldn't be used as a mindless puppet for the security system because the professor wouldn't reach that degree of paranoia.
I really feel like we created a better timeline. It was too late for the professor in our world. They were in too deep and had gone too far with their heartless goals. But saving them (and thus Arven and the AI) in another is still a happy ending.
Comments
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There's the theory that we created a new timeline where paradox Pokémon never arrived in Area Zero by taking the professor's original book, and that we saved them.
And some say that we doomed them by telling them what's under Area Zero and that we're the reason for most of the story happening (or at least its saddest parts), though that can't be right since we wouldn't be able to get the professor's original book and stop the time machine.
But at the same time, the professor writes about receiving a white book from a child (you can find that in the underdepths of Area Zero), implying that the lake cutscene did happen.
It's really confusing and I don't think any of the theories people have made are correct.
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Yeah but the professor from our world didn't exchange their own book for ours, getting ours through some other means, since they remained in possession of their book. They ended up with both instead of just one. So it happened but it wasn't the same "us", just like the "them" we met wasn't the same "them".
The AI knew the book would be found in the lighthouse and asked us to bring it to them, so the professor would have had a memory of it being there as well.
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If that turns out to be right, I wonder who gave the professor their white book. Was it a version of the protagonist, but in a different timeline? If so, how did they get the book and is it different from ours? Why didn't they take the professor's book, if the professor even offered it?
But it would explain why the AI and the professor use different words to explain what Paradox Pokémon are (the AI says Pokémon from different points of this timeline, while the human one says different timelines). Because the professor of our world and the one at the lake are different people, who worked on slightly different things. Though it could also be that the professor changed their mind while making the time machine.
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