The End of the Multiverse - and what it means for our heroes.

The kickstarter revealed that, in the end, if Big O wins, there will be no more timelines at all - but if the heroes vanquish him, there will be only ONE timeline.

The consequences for the Sentinels (our heroes - and the game) are enormous.

The Iron Legacy timeline disappears. No Freedom 6, No Iron Legacy (so, once the story finishes - we can't play them anymore ! )

The Final Wasteland Timeline may well disappear too. It explains the Renegade… And, by the way : Eternal Haka is no more.

The Tactics bio for Visionary tells us she can't access the timelines anymore. Does it also mean, above the fact that her own timeline is "lost", that time travel is now impossible ? It could contribute to explain Renegade, again…

What about La Capitan ? She is all about time travelling and exploring timelines - does the "joining" of the multiverse destroy her ? Change her ? Force her to find a new job ?

Miss Information's origins are in another timeline - and her new reality altering powers are probaly linked to Timelines manipulations. What may happen to her now ?

And, yes, no more WWII heroes either.

What do you think ? What other aspects of the sentinels comics world, as we know it, depended on alternate timelines - and will now be impossible ?

About the game itself, I understand now why, after OblivAeon, many of the game content we have is "impossible" - after all, most of our fights are "alternate" versions, easily explained by alternate timelines, and they don't exist anymore. "Sentinels of the Multiverse" had to be a "closed" game.

It's not that there will only be one timeline. It's that the prime timeline will be cut off from all other timelines, and presumably those other timelines will be cut off from each other.

If the heroes from this timeline are the only ones that can defeat OblivAeon (as implied by the Kickstarter video) AND they pulled in a bunch of heroes from the other timelines to help defeat him AND as a result they sealed the time and space breach isolating all the timelines... does that mean that in doing so they doomed all those other timelines to be destroyed by  their versions of OblivAeon...

I think there's only one Oblivaeon who's set out to destroy all timelines.

Also, just because *different* timelines are inaccessible, doesn't mean time travel itself is necessarily impossible.  It just means you can't access alternate pasts and futures anymore.  Which means certain characters could still exist, like Omnitron-X and La Capitan, since they do or can result from futures and pasts compatible with the "prime" timeline.  Chrono-Ranger is just the odd guy out, since he's explicitly tied to an alternate future.

And suddenly, OblivAeon reminds me a lot of the big bad from Worm (whose name I won't mention, because spoilers), who is similarly singular across alternate timelines.  (And dealt with by a similar gathering of cross dimensional heros and villains)

Possibly.

But, though there is a lot of time travel and alternate dimension hopping in SotM, no one ever came for an "OblivAeon future" - nor did any one seem to know that the OblivAeon event would happen. It could suggest that :

1. the OblivAeon event was not part of any timeline - until OblivAeon decided to rewrite the multiverse itself
2. once the OblivAeon event happens, time travel is not possible any more - otherwise, post OblivAeon characters could travel to the past and warn of the event ( no mention of this), or travel to the now unchangeable future ( because there is no alternate timeline anymore ?)

"Alternate timelines" is a good way to wave away any paradox created by time travel. Getting rid of the concept seems to suggest time travel is no more a thing. (At least until the writers decided that they need it for a story, rules exist to be broken).

It will be interesting to watch the evolution of the Tactics storyline. Alas, time travelling to future expansions seems to not be an option

So, we're talking about thematically appropriate gameplay.

Well, we know Ra is dead, so he's out.

Other decks would be unavailable as well. The Sentinels are out, as they've been upgraded to Void Guard. The Matriarch wouldn't be available as she's now The Harpy (a pit stop on her journey to become Pinion). Also a bunch of Environments (Final Wasteland, Silver Gulch, Time Cataclysm, Tomb of Anubis, ...)

Baron Blade would still be around as a villain, but his existing card and promo are all older plots, so thematically he'd need a new promo (or even deck) to reflect his post-OblivAeon, post-Luminary status as a new-and-improved bad guy.

The time-travelling characters can still exist. The Multiverse which contained their alternate universes or alternate timelines still exists, it's just that each universe is cut off from all the rest. So Omnitron is fine (but only with his Omnitron-U promo card). La Cap as a villain is probably out, but La Comodora has tech to protect her so the severing of the multiverse could easily have left her alive, but stranded in the Prime Universe. Chrono-Ranger is fine, he's just not in the universe where Con and the future he saw exists. It's possible he's also not in the unniverse where his past exists. But those universes are still out there so he owuld still exist. Miss Information probably just lost most if not all of her power.

A bunch of Promo cards would be defunct/not available in this just-after-OblivAeon universe:
Freedom 6
Eternal Haka
WWII Legacy & Bunker
Xtreme Prime Wardens (unless they got trapped in the Prime Universe)

Other promos are fine. Sky-Scraper could probably use her normal cards or her new promo (the tech that allows the new promo is from Luminary (BB version) but that doen't mean she gets rid of it when the threat is gone). Prime Warden and Dark Watch promos are fine except...

Captain Cosmic would (like Omnitron) be playable ONLY with his new promo. Likewise, Luminary would probably only be available with the Ivana promo (again assuming she got trapped in the Prime Universe) as Baron Blade would almost certainly revert to his evil ways as soon as someone else stopped treatening to destroy the world that he considers his to destroy.

and probably a hundred or so other changes that I haven't even begun to think about yet...

I can see that, definitely. Let's hope the final fight will not go in the same way.

What if a visitor from a parallel universe is in the main universe when the Multiverse gets “cut off?” I’m specifically thinking about the meaning of the phrase “cut off” here. Does the visitor pop back to their original universe, remain in the main universe and unable to get home, or cease to exist?

Visionary comes from an alternate timeline - she seems "fine" in tactics. Or, at least, she is still there, though with some problems keeping herself alive.

It also sims Chrono-Ranger comes from an alternate future/timeline/universe, but is still here in Tactics as Renegade (maybe).

So I would say they still exist, with their power to access timelines broken - it may have a great influence on what they become, and reduce/modifie their powers and abilities a lot.

Though, maybe, it is because they left a big "footprint" on the "main" timeline, becoming a part of it before the multiverse was closed. Other, less recurring characters could be snapped back to their own timeline/universe.

Wasn’t it recently confirmed that she is from the main timeline?

If the connections between the different universe was via a gate that was destroyed... then I'd say it is perfectly feasible that everything that came through when Nightmist became a gate just got stuck when the gate was closed... so almost all alternatives could be presumed to still be playable. 

although if Nightmist WAS the gate and the gate was destroyed...

Visionary comes from a timeline where Legacy is angrier (but not Iron Legacy angry).

Oh, that’s right, thanks. The confirmation wasn’t that she is from the main timeline, just that she wasn’t from Iron Legacy’s timeline.

Also she comes from a future where there is a Freedom Six, just not Iron Legacy's Freedom Six.

Probably FV + Unity, if I had to guess.

Could Visionary have come from Luminary's reality where there is "The Legacy of Destruction"?

No, Legacy was part of the Freedom Six in The Visionary's timeline. Considering she fought alongside them and is fighting alongside the heroes in this timeline, I think it's safe to assume that the Legacy from her timeline is still a hero. It appears to be one of the minor changes that can happen between timelines.

Do we know why Visionary “remembers” a “much angrier” Legacy (per Prophetic Vision) if he’s not Iron Legacy?

Ahem… that character is ALSO something of a reference to OblivAeon's most direct inspiration, the Anti-Monitor.  Ever since Crisis on Infite Earths, multiverally singular genocidal beings are all the rage.  Transformers has one, even new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles went that route for their version of Shredder.  DC and Marvel themselves have both gone back to that well within the past year.  It's around.

(Granted, there's also a fair bit of Galactus in Obliv's DNA.)