It's all Odine's fault *big spoilers*

[Sir Bahamut]

Why is it that you can die and the world
will end, or you can live and save it? This is, in a sense, a free choice and
thus time cannot be static.

You basically answered your own question you now, you just didn't realize it.

Squall and Co must be alive for the game to be complete. It's part of the line of time that they live and defeat Ultimecia.

If they die, you get a Game Over screen. With them dead, the game can't be completed, time can't be fulfilled. Hence when they all die, the game ends. It's not supposed to happen though, which is why you merely load up to a previous point and carry on as if nothing had happened.

For the game to be completed, they must stay alive. This fully supports the unchanging timeline.

[Optium]

So then if time can't be fulfilled, then you truly have changed time by not
fulfilling it. The cassette tape is broken now. You answered your own
question as well. ;]

.opt

[Sir Bahamut]

No, you missed my point.

In the story Square is showing us, the party remains alive through it all.
They wrote a plot which had all of them stay alive and beat the villain.

When WE play the game, all we are doing is playing through the story they wrote.

So, when we do something which breaks the story, like dying, it's game over. We have to start from an earlier point so we can progress as if the death never occured.
But if we don't screw up, we see the whole story. There's only one story we can see after all, so the full story can be treated as a complete book.

To make an analogy, dying would be like reading a book, and then stopping to read for a short while, then returning to an earlier point in the back and continuing to read.
The book remains the same though, regardless of our stopping and going back.

[Optium]

But now you're looking at it from a completely different point of view. I
understand exactly what you're saying but it's no longer really about the
original post.

.opt

[Sir Bahamut]

No, I'm looking at it from the exact same point of view, I just explained it poorly in the first post.

[Optium]

No dude, there are two different viewpoints of the game, the one from the
characters' point of view, and the one from the players'. The original topic
was based on the characters' POV but yours is based on the players'.

.opt

[Rand Al'Tor]

The 'Game over' screen just doesn't happen. When you make Laguna die somewhere, that didn't happen. Couldn't have happened, cause Squall is there!

Which is why 'fate' gets some attention. The heroes are 'the children fo fate' after all. And Ellone's attempts to make Laguna stay with Squall didn't change the past, but just made sure that it happened as it had.

As such, the JME indeed couldn't be destroyed. Well, Of cousre, odds are people are gonna try to stop Dr. Odine anyway. I can't see SeeD of the future happilly sitting along waiting for the day where they all have to die so Squall can find their corpses and say 'We're fighting across generations'

In a way, it must have been pretty bad for those SeeD. They KNOW that many years in the past, Squall Lionheart encountered all those dead SeeD, and that Ultimecia defeated them, so they've got nothing to look forward to except defeat... IF they believe this theory. (if I was IN the FFVIII-world, I know I wouldn't.)

[Sir Bahamut]

You know, one theory for Ultimecias motives is that those SeeD didn't want to wait for Ultimecia to kill so many of them and cause so much chaos, so they started pursuing Ultimecia when she was born.

This then drove Ultimecia to revenge. I mean, she gets pursused her entire life for doing nothing. So she gets really pissed, and starts fighting back, eventually compressing time.

Squall and co essentially created their own villain.

No dude, there are two different viewpoints of the game, the one from the
characters' point of view, and the one from the players'. The original topic
was based on the characters' POV but yours is based on the players'.

Ah, sorry, I thought you were referring to my first post in this topic-

[Rand Al'Tor]

Could be... in her speech as Edea, Ultimecia does sound like she has been on the receiving end of some serious persecution. Heck, whether the R=U theory is correct or not, I think plenty of SeeD would keep their eyes on Rinoa after hearing the story anyway.

[BraSkAs_FiNAl_AeoN]

whoa, deep.

[bEoWuLfX]

okay let's say odine destroyed the machine. That means that Squall would never fight ultmecia nor would he travel back intime to see edea and inspire her to start seed. Basically there would be no story. And squall would probably still be at the orphanage. So by destroying the machine everything is changed. As for playing the game and dieing... who cares. FF8 is retarded anyways.

[Zante]

I think that throught defeating Ultimeca, Squall and co created a new future with no Ultimecia at all, atlhougt the past stayed unchanged. If they wouldn't change the future, the whole game would be pointless. If the future coudn't be changed, their fight would bring nothing to them, as Ultimecia would still exist until the point when they defeated her, so it would only bring something to the people living in Ultimecas time. With other words: The future seeds would still have to fighting Ultimecia, becasue that happened before Ultimecia was killed. They also couldn't change the past, because that already happened, and throught changing it, they would stop it from changing. Basicaly, that would mean that if Odine wouldn't build the machine, Ultimecia still could send her consciousness to the pressent, as she already has the machine that was build somewhere.

But this is only my opinion of the thing, and I'm not saying that it has to be right.

[BraSkAs_FiNAl_AeoN]

Ok so lets say odine did descide to destroy it, what if that choice( to destroy the machine)was actually the choice that leads to the whole soceress/seed conflict. That is there is fate and no free will.