Oracle Drive



The Oracle Drive is an important device created by the Farseers in Final Fantasy XIII-2. In ancient times, the seeress Yeul would transfer her visions of the future into it, and they would be preserved as prophecies for future generations to find.

Datalog
''Oracle Drives are ancient image capturing devices found across the breadth of Gran Pulse. They appear to hold the visions seen by the Paddraean seeress. Images that depict the future as seen from that time have been proven to be accurate.''

''An Oracle Drive was discovered near the Paddraean Ruins by Hope and his team of researchers. Due to the appearance of several gates in the area, the scientists are focusing on the relationship between the drive and the paradox effect.''

''What was the ultimate purpose of the Paddra Oracle Drives? The dominant theory is that they were archiving device for perserving images of the future. These 'archives' appear to consist of broken fragments of the seeresses' prophecies.''
 * A Research Director's Notebook

To gain a clear picture of the timeline, it will be necessary to amass a large collection of these images and then piece them together.

''We have noted that the ancients stopped recording visions after a certain point in history. Did the process of recording to the Oracle Drive become an empty ritual? Was some other means found to preserve the prophecies? Or did the visions of the future grow so terrible that the Farseers thought it best they never be seen?''

Profile
One of the possible questions in Captain Cryptic's Confounding Quiz reveals that the Oracle Drive is a piece of technology left by the ancient fal'Cie and the Academy referred to it as a sensory perception device before it was given its official name. In the "Spinning Moonstone" fragment entry, Mog says that fragments are made of the same crystal that's inside the Oracle Drive, and that's how they can hold memories. In the "Pathos Jewel" fragment entry, Maqui explains that the crystal resonates with the thoughts of nearby people and reconstructs them in its atomic structure. The memories are recorded by injecting energy into the crystal to freeze the structure into place; if one concentrates on thinking something and then runs a current through the crystal lattice, it is possible to trap the images from inside someone's head. Maqui says scientists have even figured out how to date the recordings.

It is actually the fal'Cie seen in Paddra Ruins that records the memories to the Oracle Drive. In the "Ortlinde's Bloom" fragment, it is said the fal'Cie channels the visions of the seeress and records what she sees.

Final Fantasy XIII-2
As revealed by the 200 AF incarnation of Yeul, the Oracle Drive was a device used by the people of Yaschas Massif long ago so that Yeul could transfer the images of possible futures into it. Although the device became obsolete when the Guardian Caius became immortal, allowing the seeress to implant her visions into him, the Oracle Drive still contained images already seen and remained intact up to Noel Kreiss's time.

In 10 AF, the Academy unearthed the Oracle Drive during their excavation of the Paddra Ruins in Yaschas Massif under Hope Estheim. When Serah, Mog, and Noel arrive to that time, meeting him and Alyssa Zaidelle, Hope is pestered by the latter to show them the Oracle Drive.

As Noel pretends not to be familiar with the device, Hope explains the Oracle Drive before showing 500-year-old images of Ragnarok saving Cocoon, and Lightning fighting to save Cocoon as a l'Cie. There is also an image of Lightning fighting Caius in Valhalla, though it is blurred due to the paradox allowing Fenrir's premature presence.

Traveling to Oerba in 200 AF to negate the paradox causing Fenrir's appearance, Serah and Noel find an Oracle Drive and inspect it, displaying images of the true past events after the liberation of Cocoon, showing Lightning alongside the others on Gran Pulse. Caius appears through the Oracle Drive and attacks them until Yeul tells him to stop, as history has already been changed. After returning to Yaschas Massif in an alternate timeline at 1X AF, Serah and Noel not only see a visibly clearer vision of Lightning fighting Caius, but also one of Caius indirectly destroying Cocoon in 500 AF.

Eventually, while Noel and Serah detour to his time in a Dying World in 700 AF, they find the Oracle Drive of that time, and learned that the era's Yeul had left behind her vision of Noel's adventure across time and the two of them reuniting.

Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII
Five hundred years after the merging of Valhalla and Gran Pulse into Nova Chrysalia, Oracle Drives are shown to still be around. In Luxerion, the Oracle Drive is said to be connected to origin of the recent murders in the city. As Lumina explains, people who view the Oracle Drives believe the future is fixed and must be acted out.

Trivia

 * In Captain Cryptic's Confounding Quiz, it is revealed that due to the discovery of the Oracle Drive, Lightning's feathery belt became popular among the Academy scientists in 10 AF.
 * In Zenobia's fragment entry, it is said the moment Zenobia was summoned through a crack in spacetime by the Proto fal'Cie Adam, and became the harbinger of death for the seeress Yeul, was 'seen' and recorded within an Oracle Drive.
 * In the "Extraordinary Egg" fragment, it is revealed that Snow Villiers sporting a Pulse l'Cie brand had been sighted on an Oracle Drive. The researcher who recorded the fragment entry wonders how Snow became a l'Cie since Pulse fal'Cie are known to want nothing to do with human affairs, thus believing that Snow asked to be branded again.