Something I Haven't Understood In Obey Me So Far Playing Is What Year It's Set In? Did I Miss The Amount

something i haven't understood in obey me so far playing is what year it's set in? did I miss the amount of years stated somewhere?

like we have the D.D.D. which is like a cell phone. But then we get sent back in Nightbringer and we still have D.D.D. And anime. And heavy metal, probably. What year is it again?

No way it's been like centuries, which is how they make it sound. I'm not even sure it's been a whole decade into the past. How long does it take to get a school up and running, Diavolo?

-a confused player

Dear A Confused Player,

Don't worry. You are all of us.

You didn't miss anything about what the years are because they've never stated anything about that.

They kinda explain everything away with the "time soup" but even that isn't really an explanation at all. They mostly just don't talk about it.

It's generally accepted that the Devildom is behind the human world technology-wise. There's proof of this in season three of the OG where the brothers don't know how to use some pretty basic kitchen appliances. The idea is that in the Devildom, they have magic to supplement their tech needs, so they don't need as much tech. This is pretty standard for fantasy worldbuilding. It's the idea that magic essentially does a lot of the stuff we use technology for.

But then yeah, Nightbringer happened. And that's supposedly thousands (millions? they don't state specifics) of years in the past. So presumably, the technology wouldn't be as advanced as it is in OG. Which would mean we wouldn't have things like D.D.D.s and there was also the wasted potential of old school outfits.

Since things seem to be about the same in Nightbringer tech-wise, the question becomes why?

Either Nightbringer is set in a timeline that's so drastically different that this tech was developed a lot earlier than in the OG timeline OR it's always been that way and the OG timeline was actually taking place far into the future for us. Another possibility is that the Devildom actually developed all their tech before the human world developed theirs, but at some point their development just stagnated. Meaning it stayed at about the same level from Nightbringer to OG.

And then there's the RAD founding discrepancy. In OG, they make it sound like RAD has been around since way before Lucifer & co fell, but this was mostly portrayed through old Devilgrams. So they just straight up retconned that. I think RAD's development has only been happening for a few years in Nightbringer and then it's established before MC leaves.

All of this is to say, the time is wonky and makes no sense. You can speculate about it for hours and still come up with ??? because any of these options could work. Due to them fucking around with time travel, timelines, and "time soup," anything goes at this point.

Time travel is a risky thing to include in a story for many reasons. And this right here is one of them.

We might've been able to suspend our disbelief on the time frame of the OG, but now that they've tossed in this time travel to the supposedly distant past, it's a lot harder to just go well, it's a fantasy story so I'm not gonna worry about it!

Just one of my many complaints about the writing of this game lol.

Anyway, that's the best I can do, I'm afraid. I might have gotten some details wrong because I forget things sometimes, but this is how I've always interpreted things. I hope that helps a little, but in the end it's kinda up to you to headcanon whatever you like!