#cast's analysis

Let's put the end of the magic games –GMG– as our starting point, so the hypothetical situations begin when FT wins and end with, well, death.

One setting that has never crossed my mind until just now which surprised me is Sting and Rogue joining FT: It would've made sense, without the bonding battle against the dragons that Sabertooth had I see little reason for them to continue working on the guild that consistently made their lives a nightmare –nevermind that most likely if Sting hadn't chosen to be the master it would've ceased to exist.– As for Yukino and Minerva, who knows? I see Yukino joining too, Minerva I'm not so sure though, given her next appearance in the anime was in Tartaros, which we're assuming was if not the apocalypse then at most the begining of it of the bad timeline.

But sure, let's say Sting and Rogue both joined FT, we all know they would've loved it there, given how almost every member of the guild seems to have a fondness for the Sabertooth members kinda older sibling vibe I totally see them healing their Jienma-related and co. traumas there. But this isn't a happy ending of course.

On one of the previous posts cited earlier me and @oryu404 theorized by the time Avatar happened Frosh was already dead, and Rogue, having possibly lost half of his pillars, was on the brink of collapse and most likely killed Gray. So my take in this particular scenario is that, while Sting and Rogue healed a lot in FT, maybe Rogue's shadow wasn't quite tamed, maybe they couldn't find a way to rid of it in the guild before Acnologia came and destroyed the world. And maybe after Tartaros Gray also completely submitted to his demon powers and was also lost in rage, maybe by this point they were the only remaining members of FT and as they were, both of them only had a mind to kill –there's two different variables you can pick from by this point: whether Sting was alive or not during this.

If he was, then I'd say this is where he died and Rogue was fully consumed by his shadow and thus, stole his powers.

If he wasn't, then Frosch dying was the last bit of sanity he lost, both outcomes would end the same way obviously.

My second scenario revolves around Tartaros, whether Sting and Rogue were part of FT or not doesn't really matter, let's simply assume it happened just as our timeline and they came to lend a hand.

Assuming that's when Acnologia came, just like in canon, and the dormant dragons inside of the dragon slayers –point for thought, maybe Skyadrum was the reason Rogue's shadow hadn't been able to fully consume him– woke up and tried to save the world.

(There's a spot here that confuses me a little, if I remember correctly, f!Rogue mentioned Acnologia came with a large number of dragons that destroyed the world, but that shouldn't be possible? I'm not considering the sequel as I haven't read it, and for various reasons I don't like to count it as "canon" so the only dragon alive should be Acnologia. What confuses me is if this was something Mashima pulled out of his ass to make it more dramatic as he does usually or if this was deliberately a lie f!Rogue told the princess to gain her favor.)

Nevertheless let's assume it all happened just like in canon, the fun starts with trying to find a single reason why it all went downhill:

Maybe the FACE project actually ran through and half of the population lost their magic? That would explain the deaths of many people who weren't strong enough to fight without magic.

Could Jienma have been the actual catalyst of their doom? Having yet to conquer their fear since the Sabertooth rebranding is out of the question, maybe this fight was the one were Sting died and either willingly gave his powers to Rogue or his shadow stole them from his dead body?

Or just a whole other scenario in which they were not in Tartaros and just watched it all from down below, helpless to do anything about it.

As an ending point, just for the fun of it since tecnically it's impossible Alvarez would've happened, f!Rogue said after Acnologia's appearance the world pretty much ended I doubt Zeref would've had much to do after that lol, but for funsies.

I'm thinking, if there were any members of Sabertooth alive –which I doubt– then they would've met their end with Bloodman (I had to search the name of that guy, all member of the empire are so forgetable except maybe two lmao) along with Gajeel.

I'm cracking my brain trying to think how the Sting vs. Larcade fight would've gone in this scenario, how do you find the time to fight the demon of pleasure when your boyfriend is speedrunning his way to madness genuinely. I think Rogue would've killed him mid-fight against Sting the way Zeref did in canon, because it's funny and he deserves a pathetic death in all timelines.

Future Rogue explicitly says he killed Sting and took his power but I have my doubts about that:

f!Rogue said to Natsu that in one year from the games Frosch would be killed by Gray and thus his pillar would be gone and he would succumb to his shadow, meaning during Avatar Gray and Rogue would fight for whatever reasons.

But Tartaros happened before Avatar, and during this arc we witness Sting and Rogue's first shown improvement after vowing to change Sabertooth, which culminates in both of them killing Jienma and erasing Sabertooth's ugly past for good. (also using a unique unison raid that only they can do <3)

Which solidifies the fact that Rogue is no longer intimidated by his shadow because, as he said himself, Sting would be able to kill it in the worst case scenario. He no longer lives haunted by the thoughts of his shadow taking over him because he knows Sting will always be there to protect him.

But this obviously all happened in the good future where the world didn't end and now THIS is where the fun begins.

What happened in the "bad future" where f!Rogue is from?

If my memory serves correct f!Rogue later revealed that his plan was to open the gate of Eclipse to let dragons from the past in and rule them to overcome Acnologia, who would soon descend and raise the world into chaos.

Now I don't think he gave an exact date as to when would this be but, Acnologia did indeed appear later during Tartaros so we're going to assume that's when the apocalypse started in the bad timeline.

And let's rewind for a sec to what happened in the good timeline's Tartaros: Sting and Rogue helped Fairy Tail, saved Minerva and killed Jienma, which is a direct consequence of what f!Rogue did during Eclipse.

I explain:

What would have happened after the games ended in this bad timeline? Would Sting have accepted to become Sabertooth's new master? His resolution begins when he gives up before Erza and the rest during the final battle but I don't think he really makes up his mind about it until the dragons are attacking the city and he fights to protect his guild, both he and Rogue do.

It's not until both of them are fighting at the end of the world that they realise what made Fairy Tail the strongest guild.

And even after having technically lost, this battle gave them something f!Rogue probably didn't expect.

It gave them hope.

So can we really assume they would've followed the same path had they not fought the dragons during Eclipse? I find it wholly marvelous and poetic how f!Rogue, having lost all sense of compassion, hope and having nothing left but rage, wanting to run amok in this timeline for what happened to his indirectly saved him and his beloved of this timeline from the horrors he had to endure.

Which brings me back to my first statement. In the bad timeline Sting was left with nothing after the games ended, sure Jienma was gone, he got Lector back and he had Rogue but what was he supposed to do from there on? Without the cataclysm of the Eclipse gate opening I assume he'd want nothing to do with Sabertooth again, or maybe he did, but then as Tartaros arrived maybe the guild had not yet gone through the experience of truly fighting along your peers to protect them, none of the guilds had. (Except, y'know, Fairy Tail, but they're the main characters here.)

We can't forget that they were fighting literal demons here, plus Acnologia himself. -Again taking in mind the experience of fighting the dragons during Eclipse had also not happened here.-

You could also argue that the FACE project the Tartaros gates had planned might've actually worked in this timeline, which would've resulted in over half of the population or more being left without magic to fight, it's understandable the world fell into chaos pretty quickly and a huge number of people died, as we saw in f!Lucy's timeline.

And Sting and Rogue were probably neither mentally nor physically prepared to fight all of this right after the Magic Games, they didn't have time to bond with their guildmates after Jienma died the same way they did in the good timeline, hell I'd even argue Sting was probably in a worse state because he got his emotional and physical strength tested back then and there's no way he'd recover from that in such a short time with only Rogue's (and Lector's) help.

Throughout the manga we see how Sting is the uplifting half of this duo, he's the one who constantly reassures Rogue and the rest of the guild. He's taken his admiration for Natsu and learned from it in that sense, but is bad future Sting like this? Is he able to confidently smile and shine a path to guide the people he loves, is he able to fight for them?

In my head f!Rogue didn’t kill Sting because Sting likely gave up fighting or chose to sacrifice himself. (That being to give Rogue another chance to live or because he knew one of them would die and he knew he wouldn't be able to live without Rogue is up to interpretation :))

And this proves to me that neither can live without the other, when Sting died f!Rogue either lost his mind and gave into grief (not fully, he would after Frosch's death) and took his powers in order to survive or to preserve a small part of Sting with him, which would make this shit even sadder after his shadow fully takes over him and he's no longer conscious of this fact, using his partner's power, the only power able to guide and subdue him to kill without remorse.

f!Rogue said that Frosch was his pillar but I refuse to believe Sting is not a pillar for him as well, he may have fully lost against his shadow after Frosch's death but his relationship with Sting having ended simply with "I killed him and took his powers" I refuse to accept, Rogue lost half his heart when Sting died/was killed and Frosh was the last bit of sanity that remained of him after that, which was ultimately but not the only reason he wasn't strong enough to fight his shadow after their death.

As you can see I have a lot to say about this arc and I would've given anything for it to be explored more but alas I've spent the last 6+ years rewriting the entirety of this manga in my head and I love to dive into the possibilities. Like what could have happened if Sting had lost Rogue in that future? What happened to the rest of the Sabertooth's members? I could be here all day.

I'm like halfway there, I haven't advanced much into the story after unlocking stingue as I spend more time running around with the sillies instead of actually progressing into the game but alas.

Reviewing what I've played so far: it's a mediocre game, but like I was expecting that already so it didn't come as a surprise.

Story-wise you play throughout the Games and Tartaros arcs, with like half of the scenes missing because not all the characters appearing in the arc have rendered models so they just, skipped their parts. A few exceptions exist only in dialogue –not even voiced dialogue by the way, just the square of text ☠– so yeah don't expect an amazing adaptation of the story.

(By the way do you know those fully rendered, movie-like cutscenes these type of games usually have? You would expect important moments in the story to have this style of cutscenes right, such as idk the games' finale, or future Rogue's defeat or fuck idk the main character's fights right?

Unsurprisingly and kind of funny, only scenes featuring the girls have these type of cutscenes, making sure to have a full shot of their boobs in the process, I love this series!)

What I'm personally enjoying the most: the side quests. All of the playable characters have their own story quests and the progression system involves ranking up the guild by doing commissions in which your team gains friendship points that level up and unlock even more side stories between them.

Essentially you have at least 3 side quests with every combination of two characters plus their own separate story quests.

This leads to lots of interactions between characters and lots of silly moments that I personally enjoyed a lot, they added good depth to a lot of the relationships and honeslty I'm just a huge fan of little extra bits that exist outside of the main story and characters that usually don't interact doing so. (There's an entire side quest of Rogue being jealous of Sting spending too much time on Fairy Tail fyi, as a bonus <3)

Combat-wise it's cool, if not a little long with attack animations that you can't skip, the mechanic of doing unison raids with any pair of characters you like was dope, lots of other ways of making combined attacks and lots of upgrades available if you like to grind like me.

There's also the photo mode, because what is the point of any game if I can't take silly pictures whenever I want. This is the first game I've played that allows you to just, put all the characters in one frame and pose them however you like, usually it's like 4 at most but here you can just pile everyone in there lmao it's cool.

Idk if you're interested in any DLCs, I know there's a couple that add more playable characters such as Lyon, Levy, Lisanna and idk who else I haven't bought those, what I did buy was the set of Sting and Rogue's skins, obviously. They're cheap but it's three separate skins per playable character (I had to buy six in total) whatever you consider worth it ig. There's a free recolor of each characters' regular suits which are cool, but nothing to cry about.

Like I said before, I knew this game was overall not good but these two bitches have me in a chokehold and I knew I'd buy it at some point, I was dissapointed by some stuff but meh, I'm used to getting dissapointed by this series anyways.