Headscratchers / Shadow of Destiny

• So how did Eike come to know about everything he did in the EX endings (like how he already knows who Humonculus is)?
  • I understood it as this: The events of the game were looping over and over, slightly different each time (just like when you time travel) with each time you play the game being one loop—remember that you need to play all six regular endings to get the EX endings. By the time you get to the EX endings, Eike has been through this enough times that he has become aware of it. It's all one big fourth-wall-breaking meta thing.
• Why didn't Dr. Wagner recognise Eike as the younger version of himself? Surely he didn't forget what he looked like when he was young. Also when Eike goes to the lab basement after the explosion, he sees Homunculus, but he doesn't recognise Eike! If Homunculus had just changed Wagner into Eike, then Homunculus should have recognised Eike.
  • From what I remember Wagner did comment on Eike's youth specifically when he made his wish. So it's possible he might have recognized Eike on a subconscious level but he either didn't put two and two together or he shrugged off any similarities between himself and Eike as a coincedence. As for the second question Homunculus may have just lied in order to maintain his cover.
    • To me, that sounds like it could be a translation problem. It's quite plausible that the original Japanese version had some kind of noncommittal "what?" or "oh" that got translated to Homunculus asking who Eike is, since it would look like a good creative translation to someone who saw the scene and didn't think of it in the context of the whole game.
    • Confirmedly NOT a translation problem: the Japanese release of this game is identical in content (if not title) to the US and Europe releases, but with Japanese subtitles. All voice acting is the same in every version. (This Troper owns and has played all three. I know, I know. Obsessive nerd is obsessive.)
    • Still a translation problem. Regardless of the voice acting (it was probably more cost-effective to just use the same voice acting than to redo it ), the original writer is Japanese and would write with Japanese conventions and normal Japanese dialogue. The dialogue is obviously awkward in a number of places because they've translated it and left those same conversations. (This Troper also owns all of the games, but knows how the industry translates.)
    • This can be better explained by looking at the timeline itself. Homunculus was only just released from the stone by Dr. Wagner; he doesn't know Eike yet, but Eike (being from later in the timeline subjective to Homunculus) already knows the little djinn.
    • Which confuses things further, since in timeline D, while Homunculus would've already seen that Eike is a younger version of Dr. Wagner, Homunculus would be inside the stone, and not free to climb out of the ruins of the lab. Though... if it were ending E, it's plausible. All he was shown to do in the flashback in E was make the alchemist disappear. Maybe seeing Eike there was what gave him the idea to make the old guy young again, and set him up to play Eike's role later on?
    • Does anyone else think the Homunculus was lying about what happened to Wagner in the E ending? I mean, it's entirely possible that what we're seeing isn't so much a proper flashback as a dramatization of what he's telling Eike (at the end of the scene we see Homunculus saying "... so it was something like that," and all), and I wouldn't trust Homunculus as far as I could throw him.
    • So what really happened? A combination of the two? I figured he lied to keep Eike in the dark forever about who he is, because incest (this was ending E) is hillarious to Djinns.
    • Originally, Wagner wished for eternal youth, then betrayed and sealed Homunculus. Centuries pass, and Eike ultimately gives that same stone to Wagner. The Homunculus he summons that time is the same one he betrayed. He jumps out of the pentagrams reach and gets revenge on Wagner as well. As for why Homunculis didn't recognize Eike, I can only guess he pretended not to in order to avoid being questioned about it later.
    • He is probably just confused that the man he just sent away showed up in a different outfit, accent, and personality and is all, "Hey Homunuculus, what's up?" He probably recognized him yet was confused by how different he suddenly was, and he was just struck a mortal blow and probably confused in many respects. The point of the scene is to let the player know this is an earlier Homunuclus than the one we know.
• So who is Eike exactly? Is he actually a younger Dr. Wagner?
  • Yep. Well, he's Dr. Wagner de-aged by Homonculus with his memory erased.
    • If that's true then why doesn't Eike remember anything since the accident occurred? After all he had over 400 years to live through, surely he remembered would have remembered something?
    • The human mind might not be capable of handling more than a few hundred years of memories, then again, homunculus' de-aging gave him immediate amnesia, it may just be recurring every X years. Though he does remember the museum owner as a friend, so he does have at least some long term memomory of recent years. Then again, there's endings where the good doctor dies, so his past may be as in flux as his future. In the end, it's a case of Selective Memory.
    • It's also possible that Eike can only remember as many years of memory as he's old, since he doesn't age he can only remember the past 25 or so years of his existence. So for every more day gained one day in his past is forgotten.
    • Eike is only Dr. Wagner in the D/E timeline. In endings A, B, and C, he's Dr. Wagner's descendant. The ABC and DE timelines are mutually exclusive. (This is the point of the decision in chapter 5, since You Know Who is eavesdropping and it affects his later plans. Depending on what you say in that conversation, you establish Eike as either a Wagner family descendant, or Dr. Wagner himself.)
    • It's generally assumed that what Homunculus did to Eike causes him to constantly lose memories, thus why he forget that he owns the red stone at the beginning of the game. Also, Eike is Wagner in ALL the timelines.
  • Unless confirmed by Word of God, there's nothing to say certain timelines are exclusive to each other. Sure, it would help simplify things, but as it stands, each ending is a possible outcome playing out in seperate timelines. For one, how would saying "You're my descendent" affect things that largely? It couldn't. Odds are, Homunculus has been manipulating time to ensure that Wagner wouldn't wise up enough and try to stop him. But somehow this causes the timeline in which the EX ending occurs, this Eike is a Wagner who managed to regain his memories somehow or at least become aware of the Homunculus' deceit and decides to end it all. This would explain why a man who would have to have existed in some previous form to be erased from time when killed the evil God like Djin.
  • I wondered how could have Wagner and Eike been the same person if Homonculus could have called up Wagner's spirit. Of course it's explained that the "spirit" Homonculus called up was a fake.
    • Also worth noting is that the game's premise, that Eike can be reinserted into his body before dying near endlessly, is because Homunculus drew Eike's soul to his Place Beyond Time in the opening (notice the white tunnel in the beginning is unlike the black time travel ones) and simply puts it back into his body with all the memories of how he'll die. Which is of course best explained by Homunculus owning Eike/Wagners' soul.
    • I second this. Homunculus explicitly stated that he did not call up Dr. Wagner, in ending A. He said that it was only a puppet of sorts that he'd made. His given reason was that he couldn't call up Dr. Wagner due to him not being dead yet. Which hints that Eike is really Dr. Wagner (Homunculus cannot summon the ghost of a living person?) except that in the ABC timeline, Dr. Wagner is only his ancestor, or else the baby-swap would make no sense. (see below) Of course, Homunculus is a liar, so any reason he states as to why he didn't call up the real Dr. Wagner's ghost is probably entirely suspect.
• If Homonculus knew that Eike was really Wagner then what was the point of switching babies if he knew it didn't matter to Eike? By watching Ending A and E we know that neither Dana nor Margarete is Eike's ancestress since Eike doesn't disappear. Homunculus did say the effort was almost too much for him, so why go to the trouble?
  • He was likely hedging his bets on the off chance that playthrough's ending killed Dr. Wagner, in which case having an ancestor for Eike would be insurance against Paradox. And considering one of the EX endings has an Eike and Hugo clone descendants, it's not that implausible.
    • In the ABC timeline, Eike is not Dr. Wagner himself, only his descendant. Therefore, by switching the babies, Hugo could safely be allowed to leave the sister he grew up with (Margarete) in 2001, since that was the year she originally belonged in anyway, as the Brums' biological daughter. Meanwhile, Hugo's biological sister (Dana) had been brought back to the time she belonged in (by Eike, in chapter two, in fact) and made plans to settle down and have a family, thus ensuring Eike's existance. In the ABC timeline, Hugo's confused attempt to erase Eike by stranding Margarete was the result of his belief that Margarete was his biological sister and Eike's ancestress, thanks to his eavesdropping in chapter five. This is why the game makes such a big deal out of whether Eike tells Margarete what he thinks their relationship may be; it's a rather pivotal plot moment.
    • Eike is always Wagner. Homunculus likely switches the babies as a way to get Eile back to the Middle Ages. His ultimate goal is for Eike to give the stone to Wagner. Eike only gains access to that distant time period because the real Margarete, who belongs in that time and is his daughter, is in the vicinity when he gets killed.
    • So what about EX endings, which as far as I know only work on the assumption that Eike is Wagner?
  • It is never implied that Eike could be either a descendent or Wagner. It affirms several times that he is Wagner. Even if we are traveling through different timelines there are several constants.
  • 1. Well to take advantage of time's "homing instinct" as he calls it. He knows time will try to sort them out, and indeed Dana does get sent to the past with Eike, drawn to him with the stone. This is the only way Homunculus can get the stone to Wagner/Eike without contacting it directly. Furthermore this homing instinct also draws Margarete to Eike, leading him to the Alchemist.
  • 2. Perhaps Mrs. Wagner and Hugo should have been able to recognize Eike. But at least switching one of his kids does more to conceal Eike's identity from himself.
  • 3. Merely to reassure Eike. At any cost, he cannot have Eike chicken out at the last minute, so he does this merely as a reassurance to Eike. He also misled Eike as to who his ancestor was so that his real ancestors would never be in danger.
  • 4. He's a total jerk! He gets pleasure out of causing Wagner pain, even if Eike is not able to understand why this is so personal. Look how delighted he is in any ending where Wagner/Eike accidentally kills his own son. He is sadistic. He is also positively delighted when Eike brings Dana back to the present, the only ending he doesn't politely remind Eike to return his guest to the past, knowing she doesn't really belong there and that they may commit incest together. He is proven to be dishonest and cruel.
    • Wagner started it, though. He could have tried not making a wish. Instead, he struck a deal-his soul for eternal youth,-then tried to go back on that. In the process, he rips off and imprisons Homunculus. Also, you're twisting a lot of what happens. Dana made the choice to return to the present. There was no reason for him to offer to take her to the past. Margarete, on the other hand, had made no such choice. As for Hugo, he did want to kill Homunculus. Homunculus is no saint, but he's not the worst person in the world. It may be for his own reasons, but he does save baby Dana, offers to get Margarete back to her perceived home, and doesn't simply kill Eike for kicks once everything is said and done.
• The incedent that led to Wagner becoming Eike also resulted in Homunculus getting sealed into the philosopher's stone again. In Homunculus's personal timeline, this has got to be before he started resurrecting Eike, or he wouldn't know what he knows in the game. (Probably.) So how the hell did he get out of the stone again? Did the spell just not stick or something?
  • The thing is, Homunculus is released in the past... half of the time. One ending has Eike suggest to Wagner a sealing circle will help (effectively re-trapping homunculus), another he doesn't. However, since the past is mutable in this (and other) details, Homunculus has to make certain Eike lives long enough to get Wagner to release him. If that particular playthrough has Homunculus never get released... well then, the Homunculus helping Eike must be from a parallel/alternate timeline! Then again, time travel means that as long as Homunculus is eventually released in the present he can go about retroactively helping that along (like juggler Eike in chapter one).
  • Actually, no. Ending D is paradoxial, in that if Homunculus were simply sealed up into the stone again, he would never have been free to do the things he did in 1980 and 2001, and the Stable Time Loop isn't one. (Note that Homunculus is not sealed again in ending E, however.)
    • To further this confusion, while D cannot be a Stable Time Loop resolution to the game because of Homunculus's lack of opportunity for involvement, neither can any other ending, for similar reasons: In the others, Hugo is prevented from completing the loop. As he is sixteen at the time of his attempts on Eike's life, and it is revealed that his much older self is the one that finally finished a time machine to follow Eike with, Hugo needed to stick to his goal and live to that older age, so that his older self would actually finish making that time machine to hand to him, to start(?) this whole mess in the first place.
      - In ending A, Hugo was taken somewhere else by Homunculus, who was then removed from the equation before he could reintroduce Hugo to the timeline. Result: No old Hugo in the timeline.
      - In the B endings, Hugo is either killed, or dissuaded by a good fatherly smackdown, courtesy of Eckart Brum. Result: In the ending where Hugo lives, he's no longer set on revenge, and therefore doesn't make his time machine. In the ending he dies, well, he obviously doesn't build his time machine.
      - In the C ending, he never reads his dad's notes, and thus never decides to go after Eike. Result: No time machine.
      - In the E ending, Hugo is careless. Result: again, no Hugo = no time machine.
      - And in the EX endings, either Homunculus is taken out of the equation before he can get Eike to release him from the stone, and therefore the whole thing never happened, or
      - Helena is cured, which means Dr. Wagner doesn't have a reason to become mournful and obsess on his studies, which would have turned to creating a life (Homunculus) and ultimately lead to his disappearance... and again, this means Hugo has no reason to hunt down poor Eike.
    • Which leads this Troper to believe that no matter what happens, none of the canon endings is a Stable Time Loop at all, and thus the "real" ending, and that the whole game is one giant Timey-Wimey Ball after all. But it's an incredibly entertaining one...
    • Remember that Homunculus can time travel. I believe that the Homunculus Eike meets each time he dies is the one trapped in the stone, while the one he encounters in the real world is a different one, possibly from the aftermath of Ending E, which is itself the aftermath of the game's events.
• I think what some people may be missing is that Homunculus is a Djin, a godlike creature. While it's never explicitly stated, I think Homunculus' existence is constant in every timeline/universe (much like how the Elder God in Legacy of Kain knows what's going on even when encountered centuries before he meets Raziel). So even if in the D timeline Wagner resealed him, Homunculus still exists in a freed state in another. It's probable that he was merely trying to prevent an abosolute termination of his existence. The EX ending has him either never being freed because Wagner used the stone and thus never sought to create human life with it, or is used by Eike to wipe him from existence via a paradox (which Homunculus explained totally removes the person in question from existence entirely). While this still raises some questions (how come Hugo's paradox in the one ending didn't just reset events to start, and so on), but it does at least give a possible reasoning for every ending to have some connection (but not be linked, as I stand by the idea that each is an independent result in seperate timelines). Two other theories I have had have been that when Wagner sealed Homunculus, the spell backfired and seperated the stone from Homunculus (which is why he's weakened and slightly confused when Eike stumbles upon him in the past). Or, he never did get resealed, he teleported, and the stone is always seperated him from (kind of like the gem that houses the Djin from Wishmaster, they're connected, but seperate at the same time).
• Any and all talk of "ABC" and "DE" timelines on this page makes no sense to this particular troper, especially the thought that Eike is Dr. Wagner's descendant in the "ABC timeline". Two conflicting points exist on this supposed timeline, both stated by Homunculus. First, he switched Dana and Margarete in case Hugo tried to play the stranded-ancestor card; second, Dr. Wagner's spirit can't be summoned because he isn't dead yet... in 2001. Of course, it's entirely possible that both are true and Dr. Wagner is wandering the world still as Eike's identical ancestor, but that entirely eradicates the very plausible theory that Homunculus is able to bring Eike back to life in certain situations because Dr. Wagner traded his soul for youth (though it is just a theory). It's also possible that even Homunculus isn't sure if Eike is Dr. Wagner or a remarkably similar descendant, which would also make both statements make sense. Not to mention the EX Endings...
• How in the flying blue hell did Hugo get a time machine? I know he says that his future self brought it to him, but even WITH that knowledge and the Stable Time Loop that would create, but if Eike manages to stop him, doesn't that make the entire game never happen? And that would mean that Eike would never meet Homunculus, meaning he would never be able to travel through time to accidentally create him, and THAT means oh dear, I've gone cross-eyed.
• Why does Hugo think leaving Eike's ancestor behind in the present day is a threat to him? Did he forget that Eike also has a time machine and could easily just take her back?
• So where did the red stone come from? Dana found in in the bar and gave it to Eike. Eike gave it to Wagner. Wagner unsealed Homunculus and then, in one timeline it vanishes, in another Wagner picks it up and wanders the world as Eike. So how did it get to the cafe or into Eike's possession? If it got there from Wagner's wandering that means the red stone is stuck in a infinite loop being passed from Wagner to Eike to Dana to Eike to Wagner, wihch means Homunculus' entire existence is basically being sealed and unsealed despite the fact that he acts like he has a past before meeting Wagner. So how the hell did the stone get to that bar? Seems kind of important. The philosophers stone that causes all this.
• How do all the Paradoxes exist?
  • Within the game, just about any action in the past would have cancelled out the whole story. The digipad seems to be able to allow paradoxes that are a result of its user's dabblings. The digipad also seems very connected to the very essence of the Djinn. This is evidenced by his desperation to grab it in ending A and how easily it destroys him, though I am unclear whether it actually hits him or causes a mutual destruction. Either way, his ability to travel through time and the digipads work very similarly. And if he can travel without it, what is the digipad to him, then? If a Djinn can grant wishes, than a machine linked to him should be able to handle or allow the resulting paradoxes.
  • That is why the only paradox that seems to end the story is the one which denies Homunculus's existence. (The EX endings). Without Djinn magic, paradoxes can no longer be maintained. Everything is set back to normal. To a degree. It doesn't show the two daughters being switched back but it does show the normal descendants of Hugo and Wagner living like everyone else in the present. It is no small wonder why we didn't see their dopplegangers in every other age like we did with the other townsfolk during the playthroughs.
• Putting aside for a second that Eike is actually Margaret's father and not her descendant, how in the hell does switching the babies protect his existence at all? The baby didn't give birth a decedent before being switched, taking the baby supposed to be his ancestor to the present would have wiped him from existence long before Hugo threatened to do the same thing.