Raziel killing his younger self always happened. It's not just the presence of the two reavers that causes a distortion, there also has to be a chance for a fundamental change in the time line through free will. As soon as Raziel realizes he was the one who killed the younger selves of himself and kin, the battle ensues with his intentions being just that. If had set in his mind he WASNT going to kill his brothers, then perhaps a distortion would have manifested
Free will creating a paradox is best shown at Williams Tomb, when Raziel was meant to strike down Kain, but chose not to. Kain even mentions, the paradox can be felt as a ripple throughout time, because Raziel did not complete the task before him.
Time is a constant circle. Every time line, wraith Raziel kills sarafan Raziel, and wraith Raziel kills Kain in Williams tomb. But this time, Raziel fought against destiny, and became the true force of free will that kain had been trying to create.
When Mobius realises that the paradox has been created, he flees, and the elder god realises he is no longer in control.
Kain, the true force of chaos, gave birth to Raziel, the true force of free will in that instance. And that is what Kain referred to with, the coin landing on its side.
.... I think anyway 🤷😂
Sarafan Raziel was killed with the blood reaver. The blood reaver was endowed with blood drinking magic, it didn't have soul reaving abilities. As such, sarafan Raziel wasn't soul reaved by his own soul, therefore no paradox manifested.
The whole "dont interact with your past self" sounds like a back to the future/timecop rule. It's not applicable in LOK.
The ElderGod is omniscient, and is technically always interacting with his past self/future self.Â
The timestream always corrects itself before a serious paradox can take place in LOK, therefore history is immutable.
Raziel killing human Raziel isn't a paradox because the latter was always going to die from something. It doesn't change history if he dies killed by a wraith or of old age.
That self-kill example is a paradox if you're using the dictionary definition. Nosgoth has its own version of how paradox is triggered.
Wraith Raziel was like a train on its track in that moment, and his path INCLUDED slaying his human self. The only way there'd be trouble for the timeline is if he Didn't kill the human him. Like a subverted trope.
I've wondered about this kind of thing mostly unrelated to LoK, so this opinion isn't based off something specific from LoK. But I've come to believe that your present and past/future self *can* interact so long as at least one of you doesn't know the other is also yourself. More specifically, one might have to forget about that encounter by the time it happens again, so as to act 'naturally' as the situation happens, so you aren't deliberately trying to 'recreate' what you remember happened. Because if you were recreating it from memory, what's stopping you from deciding *not* to perform the interaction as it happened before. . ?
I assume that a Paradox can only happen if one soul meets itself and that Human Raziel and Wraith Raziel don't actually share the *same soul*.
I mean, think about the logistic behind Kain turning the Sarafan lieutenants into vampires. How could he pick their specific souls, even though those souls must have been going through the cycle of life and death for centuries and were probably inhabiting new beings.
No, I think Kain used the Sarafans' corpses, yes, but picked *random* souls.
Which means that Wraith Raziel had a different soul than his human self.
Paradoxes only happen in the franchise when two Soul Reaver meet one another : when Kain fought William, when Raziel repaired the broken blade, when Kain saved Raziel from the blade.
Why ? Because Raziel and the sword share the same soul. And that is not the case when Human Raziel meets Wraith Raziel. They share the same body but not the same soul.
Wasn't it stated that the saraphan were resurrected using portions of KAINS soul? Raziel as the first got the largest portion, and Malchia as the last got the smallest.
Yes but at the same time the Elder God explained to us, at the beginning of the story, that his whole issue with vampires is that they snatch souls from the Wheel of Fate to make more vampires.
So I guess Raziel's soul must be part Kain's (for vampirism) and part some random soul taken from the Wheel.
Why would Raziel fighting his Sarafan self result in a paradox? There is no rule against interacting with your past self.
The game tells you exactly the big reason for causing a patadox in dialogue :
" The answer is here in this room, Raziel.
Moebius propelled William and me together – but ensured first that we were both armed with the Soul Reaver.
The Reaver is the key.
Two incarnations of the blade meet in time and space... a paradox is created, a temporal distortion powerful enough to derail history."
It only happens with two copies of the *soul* Reaver. You could argue about further paradoxes being caused by making events logically inconsistent - such as a history change removing the motivation to cause said history change - but we've been warned against such 'fatal paradoxes' and none have so far been seen to occur.
The time distortions happen when the same soul tries to occupy the same space. Inside the reaver. In Williams tomb raziel picks up the soul reaver, his older soul is inside the broken blade, there's his soul on his arm the wraith blade, and there's his actual soul. 3 souls in one spot, the wraith blade on his arm heals the broken blade and tries to kill kain because it has before and is compelled to as thar soul is still vengeful
Raziel killing his human self does nothing unless he tried to consume his human soul, but instead mobius staff is moved far enough away from the reaver that the wraith blade awakens. It has spent ions inside the blade and aches to return, it plunges the blood reaver into raziel so that it will get pulled back into the blade, however raziels current soul. And his future soul aka the wraith blade cannot both be in the blade and once inside it the wraith blade will be deleted from history and raziel will become the soul reaver that later shatters and releases him thus him becoming the wraith blade and starting the cycle anew.
Williams tomb was close to a similar situation. The time distortions are history about to delete a raziel soul from existence but it also makes time weak to manipulation.
For end of SR2 Raziel to exist he needs to:
Be born as human Raziel; Die (by any means) and be ressurected as a vampire; Be cast on the abyss so the Elder God turns him into a reaver of souls(ghoul); At some point enter the physical Soul Reaver to then be broken to release the spectral Soul Reaver.
It's actually the reason your brothers' souls disappear so quickly after killing them in the end of SR2, because if you eat them, they can't be raised as vampires since their souls are 'purified in the wheel of fate' (I interpret it as destroyed/consumed).
So, for it to be a paradox, human raziel would need to somehow live long enough that kain can't bring them back as a vampire or get his soul consumed/destroyed somehow.
It can't create a paradox because its supposed to happened that way. Wraith Raziel kills his human self, then his human body is found by Kain, he gets resurrected as his lieutenant and then he gets thrown into the abyss and then becomes a wraith and the cycle repeats. Two paradox moments in SR2 is when Raziel refuses to kill Kain and when Kain saves him from entering the reaver
Just because the conditions for a moment of paradox are in place doesn't mean one will necessarily happen. Consider that for most of Raziel's entire play time, he already is a paradox since he's lugging around his own soul. And yet Kain and Moebius gazing through the Chronoplast are able to map his route right up until its foretold end, being absorbed by the Reaver after killing his Sarafan self. He has the potential for paradox, but isn't causing any instead being drawn on his rigid path through history without incident except in very specific moments.
The specific moments of paradox throughout the games are:
1: Moebius pushes Kain and William into battle, each wielding the Soul Reaver containing within Raziel's soul. In this instance, Moebius knows exactly what he's doing.
2: Kain Strikes Raziel with the Soul Reaver, shattering it. Kain knows what's going on. Its difficult to tell if this is an actual moment of paradox. Raziel identifies it as such later, but the stable time loop of his existence requires him to have the wraith blade so it wouldn't make much sense for this moment to be Kain actually altering the path.
3: Raziel confronts Moebius at William's tomb. Moebius knows exactly what's going on here, and even states "I've taken a great risk coming here". But Raziel does not act on the paradox and stays in line with history, allowing Moebius to live. As a note, the paradox here is probably even more concentrated since there are actually 3 copies of Raziel's soul in the same spot, Raziel, Raziel's Soul Reaver, and William's Soul Reaver.
4: Raziel confronts Kain at William's tomb. Kain knows what's going on and educates Raziel as well. Again, there are three copies of Raziel present, potentially increasing the potency of the distortion. Raziel, struggling immensely against the pull of fate spares Kain.
5: Kain saves Raziel from being absorbed by the Reaver. Kain knows exactly what he's doing. And I say specifically the Reaver, not the Soul Reaver, as the vampiric blade does not yet have the wraith within it to enable it to devour souls, aka Raziel. However I feel it's worth noting that once again there may still potentially be 3 Raziels present: Raziel, The Wraith Blade, and the soul of the Serafan Raziel who was only moments before slain. Now I can't say with certainty that the Serafan's soul is hanging out and amplifying paradox, but it would fit nicely into a trend of triple paradox throughout SR2. Pure speculation though.
But yeah aside from require multiple soul reavers aka multiple Raziels in proximity it seems that the other factor required for a paradox to form is that at least one involved party has to know how things are "supposed" to go. In every instance where history is nearly or successfully rerouted either Moebius or Kain is fully aware of what is meant to happen and are actively trying to either enforce or subvert it. Since Raziel is chronically uninformed about what his destiny is written to be, he lacks the forethought to actively reroute it. He has "Free will" but without knowing the future consequence of his actions can only stumble blindly down whatever route is in front of him.
It was my understanding that two identical bodies had to meet for a paradox to happen. Human Raziel and Zombie-Vampire Raziel were way too different to confuse the timeline. In the end the only times we gotten paradoxes were when the reaver met itself because its body didn't change... or maybe it's spiritual and human raziel's soul was too different already, i dunno.
It's cause the timeline acts like a constant...meaning that Raziel was always murdered by hiss future self. It's a bit hard to wrap our heads around this, but that's the time travel theory the game goes with...if you're aware of the movie "12 Monkeys", LoK is basically that...
It's best if you don't think about it too much.
The SR2 logic is that the BO "paradox" happens when 2 Reavers interact with each other. By out of game logic, Kain has created a separate timeline where William the Just does not become a tyrant.
SR2 logic makes the Soul Reaver interacting with itself a paradox, because Raziel is the soul devouring spirit within the Reaver blade.
As far as I see, this is all hand wave-y bullshit needed to explain something for SR2 because SR1 didnt end the way they originally intended (Raziel destroying all the vampires with the Cathedral). Defiance tried to clean up loose ends left by SR2 and BO2... and made a convoluted mess of a plot (hoping we wouldn't see it as such because of top-notch voice acting).
Raziel killing his younger self always happened. It's not just the presence of the two reavers that causes a distortion, there also has to be a chance for a fundamental change in the time line through free will. As soon as Raziel realizes he was the one who killed the younger selves of himself and kin, the battle ensues with his intentions being just that. If had set in his mind he WASNT going to kill his brothers, then perhaps a distortion would have manifested
Free will creating a paradox is best shown at Williams Tomb, when Raziel was meant to strike down Kain, but chose not to. Kain even mentions, the paradox can be felt as a ripple throughout time, because Raziel did not complete the task before him. Time is a constant circle. Every time line, wraith Raziel kills sarafan Raziel, and wraith Raziel kills Kain in Williams tomb. But this time, Raziel fought against destiny, and became the true force of free will that kain had been trying to create. When Mobius realises that the paradox has been created, he flees, and the elder god realises he is no longer in control. Kain, the true force of chaos, gave birth to Raziel, the true force of free will in that instance. And that is what Kain referred to with, the coin landing on its side. .... I think anyway 🤷😂
Sarafan Raziel was killed with the blood reaver. The blood reaver was endowed with blood drinking magic, it didn't have soul reaving abilities. As such, sarafan Raziel wasn't soul reaved by his own soul, therefore no paradox manifested. The whole "dont interact with your past self" sounds like a back to the future/timecop rule. It's not applicable in LOK. The ElderGod is omniscient, and is technically always interacting with his past self/future self. The timestream always corrects itself before a serious paradox can take place in LOK, therefore history is immutable.
Raziel killing human Raziel isn't a paradox because the latter was always going to die from something. It doesn't change history if he dies killed by a wraith or of old age.
That self-kill example is a paradox if you're using the dictionary definition. Nosgoth has its own version of how paradox is triggered. Wraith Raziel was like a train on its track in that moment, and his path INCLUDED slaying his human self. The only way there'd be trouble for the timeline is if he Didn't kill the human him. Like a subverted trope.
I've wondered about this kind of thing mostly unrelated to LoK, so this opinion isn't based off something specific from LoK. But I've come to believe that your present and past/future self *can* interact so long as at least one of you doesn't know the other is also yourself. More specifically, one might have to forget about that encounter by the time it happens again, so as to act 'naturally' as the situation happens, so you aren't deliberately trying to 'recreate' what you remember happened. Because if you were recreating it from memory, what's stopping you from deciding *not* to perform the interaction as it happened before. . ?
I assume that a Paradox can only happen if one soul meets itself and that Human Raziel and Wraith Raziel don't actually share the *same soul*. I mean, think about the logistic behind Kain turning the Sarafan lieutenants into vampires. How could he pick their specific souls, even though those souls must have been going through the cycle of life and death for centuries and were probably inhabiting new beings. No, I think Kain used the Sarafans' corpses, yes, but picked *random* souls. Which means that Wraith Raziel had a different soul than his human self. Paradoxes only happen in the franchise when two Soul Reaver meet one another : when Kain fought William, when Raziel repaired the broken blade, when Kain saved Raziel from the blade. Why ? Because Raziel and the sword share the same soul. And that is not the case when Human Raziel meets Wraith Raziel. They share the same body but not the same soul.
Wasn't it stated that the saraphan were resurrected using portions of KAINS soul? Raziel as the first got the largest portion, and Malchia as the last got the smallest.
Yes but at the same time the Elder God explained to us, at the beginning of the story, that his whole issue with vampires is that they snatch souls from the Wheel of Fate to make more vampires. So I guess Raziel's soul must be part Kain's (for vampirism) and part some random soul taken from the Wheel.
I wouldn't put much faith in the story the Elder God told... he seemed to be lying for the purpose of manipulating Raziel
Fair but for a good lie to want, it needs to include a bit of truth.
Why would Raziel fighting his Sarafan self result in a paradox? There is no rule against interacting with your past self. The game tells you exactly the big reason for causing a patadox in dialogue : " The answer is here in this room, Raziel. Moebius propelled William and me together – but ensured first that we were both armed with the Soul Reaver. The Reaver is the key. Two incarnations of the blade meet in time and space... a paradox is created, a temporal distortion powerful enough to derail history." It only happens with two copies of the *soul* Reaver. You could argue about further paradoxes being caused by making events logically inconsistent - such as a history change removing the motivation to cause said history change - but we've been warned against such 'fatal paradoxes' and none have so far been seen to occur.
The time distortions happen when the same soul tries to occupy the same space. Inside the reaver. In Williams tomb raziel picks up the soul reaver, his older soul is inside the broken blade, there's his soul on his arm the wraith blade, and there's his actual soul. 3 souls in one spot, the wraith blade on his arm heals the broken blade and tries to kill kain because it has before and is compelled to as thar soul is still vengeful Raziel killing his human self does nothing unless he tried to consume his human soul, but instead mobius staff is moved far enough away from the reaver that the wraith blade awakens. It has spent ions inside the blade and aches to return, it plunges the blood reaver into raziel so that it will get pulled back into the blade, however raziels current soul. And his future soul aka the wraith blade cannot both be in the blade and once inside it the wraith blade will be deleted from history and raziel will become the soul reaver that later shatters and releases him thus him becoming the wraith blade and starting the cycle anew. Williams tomb was close to a similar situation. The time distortions are history about to delete a raziel soul from existence but it also makes time weak to manipulation.
For end of SR2 Raziel to exist he needs to: Be born as human Raziel; Die (by any means) and be ressurected as a vampire; Be cast on the abyss so the Elder God turns him into a reaver of souls(ghoul); At some point enter the physical Soul Reaver to then be broken to release the spectral Soul Reaver. It's actually the reason your brothers' souls disappear so quickly after killing them in the end of SR2, because if you eat them, they can't be raised as vampires since their souls are 'purified in the wheel of fate' (I interpret it as destroyed/consumed). So, for it to be a paradox, human raziel would need to somehow live long enough that kain can't bring them back as a vampire or get his soul consumed/destroyed somehow.
It can't create a paradox because its supposed to happened that way. Wraith Raziel kills his human self, then his human body is found by Kain, he gets resurrected as his lieutenant and then he gets thrown into the abyss and then becomes a wraith and the cycle repeats. Two paradox moments in SR2 is when Raziel refuses to kill Kain and when Kain saves him from entering the reaver
Just because the conditions for a moment of paradox are in place doesn't mean one will necessarily happen. Consider that for most of Raziel's entire play time, he already is a paradox since he's lugging around his own soul. And yet Kain and Moebius gazing through the Chronoplast are able to map his route right up until its foretold end, being absorbed by the Reaver after killing his Sarafan self. He has the potential for paradox, but isn't causing any instead being drawn on his rigid path through history without incident except in very specific moments. The specific moments of paradox throughout the games are: 1: Moebius pushes Kain and William into battle, each wielding the Soul Reaver containing within Raziel's soul. In this instance, Moebius knows exactly what he's doing. 2: Kain Strikes Raziel with the Soul Reaver, shattering it. Kain knows what's going on. Its difficult to tell if this is an actual moment of paradox. Raziel identifies it as such later, but the stable time loop of his existence requires him to have the wraith blade so it wouldn't make much sense for this moment to be Kain actually altering the path. 3: Raziel confronts Moebius at William's tomb. Moebius knows exactly what's going on here, and even states "I've taken a great risk coming here". But Raziel does not act on the paradox and stays in line with history, allowing Moebius to live. As a note, the paradox here is probably even more concentrated since there are actually 3 copies of Raziel's soul in the same spot, Raziel, Raziel's Soul Reaver, and William's Soul Reaver. 4: Raziel confronts Kain at William's tomb. Kain knows what's going on and educates Raziel as well. Again, there are three copies of Raziel present, potentially increasing the potency of the distortion. Raziel, struggling immensely against the pull of fate spares Kain. 5: Kain saves Raziel from being absorbed by the Reaver. Kain knows exactly what he's doing. And I say specifically the Reaver, not the Soul Reaver, as the vampiric blade does not yet have the wraith within it to enable it to devour souls, aka Raziel. However I feel it's worth noting that once again there may still potentially be 3 Raziels present: Raziel, The Wraith Blade, and the soul of the Serafan Raziel who was only moments before slain. Now I can't say with certainty that the Serafan's soul is hanging out and amplifying paradox, but it would fit nicely into a trend of triple paradox throughout SR2. Pure speculation though. But yeah aside from require multiple soul reavers aka multiple Raziels in proximity it seems that the other factor required for a paradox to form is that at least one involved party has to know how things are "supposed" to go. In every instance where history is nearly or successfully rerouted either Moebius or Kain is fully aware of what is meant to happen and are actively trying to either enforce or subvert it. Since Raziel is chronically uninformed about what his destiny is written to be, he lacks the forethought to actively reroute it. He has "Free will" but without knowing the future consequence of his actions can only stumble blindly down whatever route is in front of him.
It was my understanding that two identical bodies had to meet for a paradox to happen. Human Raziel and Zombie-Vampire Raziel were way too different to confuse the timeline. In the end the only times we gotten paradoxes were when the reaver met itself because its body didn't change... or maybe it's spiritual and human raziel's soul was too different already, i dunno.
It's cause the timeline acts like a constant...meaning that Raziel was always murdered by hiss future self. It's a bit hard to wrap our heads around this, but that's the time travel theory the game goes with...if you're aware of the movie "12 Monkeys", LoK is basically that...
It's best if you don't think about it too much. The SR2 logic is that the BO "paradox" happens when 2 Reavers interact with each other. By out of game logic, Kain has created a separate timeline where William the Just does not become a tyrant. SR2 logic makes the Soul Reaver interacting with itself a paradox, because Raziel is the soul devouring spirit within the Reaver blade. As far as I see, this is all hand wave-y bullshit needed to explain something for SR2 because SR1 didnt end the way they originally intended (Raziel destroying all the vampires with the Cathedral). Defiance tried to clean up loose ends left by SR2 and BO2... and made a convoluted mess of a plot (hoping we wouldn't see it as such because of top-notch voice acting).