Cid Garlond and his memory

This is going all the way back to ARR, but during the quest to kill Garuda, while flying on Cid's airship, he regains all his memories and recalls seeing a very bright light land on his airship, which gave him his goggles. That blinding light was us, the WoL.

I just replayed this quest last night on an alt, and it reminded me that I never understood this scene. Is this how we first got to Eorzea before we ended up in that chocobo carriage to start the game? Is it something from 1.0? I never played the original game, just ARR.

So, I'm curious what this scene was showing exactly.

I was under the impression that the scene was more symbolic than truth. I don’t think it was meant to be taken literally but us “giving him his goggles” equates to him remembering us and giving him his identity back. We were never actually there outside the echo and that never really happened in the past.

That's where I fell on the matter, as well. The conversation begins and ends with the goggles; Cid is frustrated that he can remember so little that he doesn't even know where he got his own goggles. He reaches out for his memory, the Echo latches onto it, these two forces co-mingle, draw the memories forward, and sort them out, and we / Cid see it unfold together. For some reason, perhaps something to do with Cid's third eye, he sees a light and experiences something like a glowing version of you handing him the goggles, bringing him back to the present moment and closing the loop.

I see it a bit like the Ysayle / Haurchefant ghosts. Is that literally what happened? Is it literally what we saw? Is it all art and metaphor? Who knows. But I take it as symbolic.

The whole thing being symbolic makes a lot of sense. The only problem with that is Cid says "That was you, wasn't it?" And Wedge and Biggs were there in the flashback, so it made it seem like it was a real thing that actually happened.

Much like that time when they talk about the 12 being primals that can be summoned and a wheelbarrow of other seemingly important plot pieces, it won’t be spoken of again in game

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Originally Posted by odym82

Much like that time when they talk about the 12 being primals that can be summoned and a wheelbarrow of other seemingly important plot pieces, it won’t be spoken of again in game

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smh if you don't expect there to be a Normal Raid where we fight The Twelve

It's a weird scene, mainly due to how unique it is. First of all, it's the only Echo vision so far that it's someone else making the "headache" animation, and we didn't. Instead our character would reach out our hand to him. This could be an indication that it's a different kind of echo vision: We're not jumping in his memories, but his current thoughts (also explains why he's narrating the scene). Us appearing in there could be like our character asking a question, that he responds to.

Didn't the 1.0 echo used to actually alter the memories it looked at?

Like if you used the echo to peek at someones memories they'd remember you being there when it happened, even though you weren't?

I thought that was part of why echo-users got quite a bit of flak from the general populace? Imagine meeting someone, they clutch their head, and you have a sudden realization that this person stood and watched every important thing that ever happened to you. Freaky...

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Originally Posted by Jandor

Didn't the 1.0 echo used to actually alter the memories it looked at?

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Yes, this is true. There's two layers of that.

The first is out-of-world. The Echo was part of the original story, which went in a different direction. We may never know what the full, original context was supposed to be. For example, in one of the 1.0 cutscenes, you actually took an item out of the Echo vision with you. That's not how the Echo as we know it works, that's not something that should be able to happen, and there was never an explanation for it. So when we talk about these things, we have to talk about them in light of what we know today. There have been some quiet retcons in the background that some may never even notice, and sometimes you'll see the stitches. That brings us to the truth as we know it today:

The in-world explanation is that when you look into someone's memories with the Echo, it re-creates the scene as if you were there. Once that Echo-induced moment has been created, however, you can play with it a bit. You can get a better vantage point. You can explore the area. You can see things the observer missed. You can ask questions they didn't. We just don't.

You see, this was a very convoluted way to tell a story when the game never told you whether you were in an Echo or not. When the game was rebuilt as A REALM REBORN, it seems that the decision was made to cut the whole damn mechanic and replace it with de-saturated instant replay. We could have just made it clear when you were in an Echo and kept the whole time-detective angle...but it seems as though they threw the baby out with the bathwater.

Wouldn't it be fun if we "mastered the Echo" and could do it again? Spend an expansion or two playing with the Echo the old way, but executed a little better? And then we could fight the Presence of Silvertear Lake and <goes off on an Erik-like digression>

Also to add into what Anonymoose has said, from what I can also remember from 1.0's version of the echo was that not everyone whom you used to get into it, was able to remember you being in their memories. I think the only people who had been able to realize it where echo users themselves and special people. I remember there was, I think it was a whm quest, where we had to help Raya'o Senna, Kann'e's sister, and we used the echo on her, she remembered us and got extremely ticked off that we invaded her privacy like that. (Though that's the only time I can think of that someone actually remembered us).

Blah 1.0's echo was so convoluted.

Thanks to Tales from the Storm, we also have have this image of twelve-year-old Cid, and he has his goggles already (on the ground next to him).

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Originally Posted by Anonymoose

I see it a bit like the Ysayle / Haurchefant ghosts. Is that literally what happened? Is it literally what we saw? Is it all art and metaphor? Who knows. But I take it as symbolic.

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I think that scene had to really happen. They lent their power to us so we could save Estinien.

From memory, Alphinaud also sensed "something" but not enough to remember it or at least be willing to describe it to us, so it certainly wasn't just in our minds.

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Originally Posted by Anonymoose

Wouldn't it be fun if we "mastered the Echo" and could do it again? Spend an expansion or two playing with the Echo the old way, but executed a little better? And then we could fight the Presence of Silvertear Lake and <goes off on an Erik-like digression>

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Honestly wouldn't be shocked considering we're reaching the tipping point of the Hyd/Zod storyline that this may be a thing we do. I know they're trying to keep themselves as far apart from 1.0 as possible but that concept alone seems to good to just leave on the floor.