About the title

[Cyborg]

Rise from the ashes
Risen from the ashes

Rise from ashes does not sound grammatically correct. Maybe it's just a placeholder? I don't know.

[x4000]

It's definitely grammatically correct.  The question is if it's awkward or not.  I'll be curious what folks think in general.

[wwwhhattt]

Is it a remake or sequel?

'###2: Tagline' might sound too much like a continuation of the previous game, so if you're making a new version of the original it might be better to leave it with just AI War 2.

[x4000]

It is a sequel.  So... yeah, maybe so.

[Pumpkin]

I'm not very enticed by the current name. "Raised from Ashes" sounds a bit generic.

I remember some random (and not very serious) discussions about that on the this topic. I liked "Second Wave" because it comes from the game itself and imply the "2" with "second". I understand the need for clarity leading to "AI War:Classic" and "AI War 2: Something", but to me, "AI War:Fleet Command" and "AI War: Second Wave" sounded nice.

Well, okay, let's keep the "2" somewhere. Speaking of it, I prefer "2" instead of "II" because there is already a capital I in "AI War". The short version would be "AIWII"; I prefer "AIW2". But maybe we could use II in "AI War II: Something" and 2 in "AIW2". Okay, small digression.

I could spend hours trying to come up with suggestions for names, but I just won't. I'll just say that, yes, I think that question must be addressed. Let's discuss it, shall we?

[wwwhhattt]

It is a sequel.  So... yeah, maybe so.

It takes place after AI War?

[Steelpoint]

Plot twist, you're playing as the AI resistance.

[x4000]

It is a sequel.  So... yeah, maybe so.

It takes place after AI War?

Yep!

[Vinco]

I agree that "Rise" is the proper form.  Though I could also see this as simply AI War 2: From the Ashes

[Aklyon]

It is a sequel.  So... yeah, maybe so.

It takes place after AI War?

Yep!

...is it after any particular victory condition, or is that not important?

[x4000]

It is a sequel.  So... yeah, maybe so.

It takes place after AI War?

Yep!

...is it after any particular victory condition, or is that not important?

After the simplest possible victory condition (just destroying the two AIs), in this particular canonical line.  Basically it's not that the others are non-canonical, but they would be diverging branch paths along the lines of what you see in the Zelda universe or Back to the Future II.

[Draco18s]

Back to the Future technically has a single canonical timeline: Marty's POV.  Zelda, not so much.  Theirs branches in ways that make it impossible to have a single point of view that sees it all because of the nature of the branches (one being "Link failed to defeat Ganon" vs. "Link beat Ganon": those can not both be true at the same pov-time).

But yes, point taken.

[x4000]

Zelda technically has some splits that are not based on Link failing to defeat Ganon or defeating him.  There's also a split based on what happened after he defeated Ganon in the future but left that time period, and then after he returned as a child and continued life in a world where Ganon never took over in the first place.  Those don't contradict one another.

In the BTTF timeline, Marty's POV overlaps a number of objective timelines that are all canonical until invalidated.  He grew up in one timeline that then was drastically altered and continued in a way that was divorced from his memories of childhood.  Doc Brown legitimately died in the old west, as well as left the DeLorean to him.  Contradicting that, but not since Marty's POV is the throughline, the DeLorean was then never put in the cave but instead returns to 1985 and is destroyed.

There are other examples as well, but all of those timelines must be canonical and have existed in order for causality to function in any way.  In my opinion, BTTF is a version of the multiverse theory where Marty's POV is hopping between multiple universes that are each distinct and intact.  He does not ever actually alter any particular universe in the sense of erasing a given outcome, but rather moves himself to a universe where a given outcome never came to pass.

Otherwise paradoxes like the time machine being left in the cave versus being pushed by the train cannot coexist.  Doc's worries about a paradox seem to be completely incorrect in practice, since he doesn't realize at the time that they are multiverse-hopping and are not actually altering events per se.  Rather all possible events happen, and they choose which universe to inhabit at a given time.  You could make a case that he understands this by the end of the trilogy and is simply explaining this in very dumbed-down terms when he says "your future is whatever you want to make it."

[Draco18s]

He does not ever actually alter any particular universe in the sense of erasing a given outcome, but rather moves himself to a universe where a given outcome never came to pass.

Right, this is what I meant by  a POV timeline.

There was a...I'm going to call it a Wizard of Oz fan novel (I am unsure of the author and how "canon" it is) where the main character--I'm going to call her Alice--is given the power to go back in time, but she can only alter a single past event.  She inadvertently prevents the king of Oz from doing something stupid (drinking from a fountain--I forget the exact details as to why this is important), and as a result the Emerald City is instead the Obsidian City (complete with black glasses instead of green*).  So she goes back in time again to stop herself from stopping him and can't find the fountain.  Goes back in time again and again, looking all over the forest for the fountain, cloning herself hundreds of times (cue image of a dozen Alices all running around and bumping into each other).

Eventually Alice figures out hint that the "power" of "only alter a single event" is actually a curse that actively prevents her from making more changes, and gets the hint that there's more than one way to view time.  So she travels back in time along her own personal timeline rather than the objective real-timeline and is able to not-alter the past (by choosing differently).

So that's what I meant by a single non-branching timeline: Marty's personal timeline.  But as far as I know, there's no single entity in the Zelda universe that can experience all the outcomes of the Zelda branching timeline.

*That's a thing that wasn't shown in the movie: when you entered the city you had to put on special green-tinted glasses.  Very obvious to the reader that that's how everything in the city has the shade of emerald.

[x4000]

Right, understood on the emerald glasses; it was much more political in the book than the movie.  Very interesting in the Obsidian City, there -- and the commentary on the POV timeline.