Originally Posted by
Anonymoose
- The ability is provided by an entity (likely Hydaelyn)
Originally Posted by
Minfilia
And while I am loath to admit it, you have provided us with some very important information.
Ifrit believes you blessed by a specific deity, and that that is where you obtained the Echo.
Lord Errant
Originally Posted by
Minfilia
Were you not witness to the skies turning dark and showering the land with a storm of stars?
Some of our brothers believe those who partook in this celestial event were “touched” by the Twelve, and that that is how they came by their gift.
Fade to White
While this is hardly an important point, I was under the impression throughout these conversations that we'd been blessed by our Guardian. It's a stretch to call Hydaelyn a specific deity, and simply wrong to call it (her? him?) one of the Twelve -- but Oschon (or whoever your guardian may be) is definitely both. I think the original plan for the questline would have expanded upon -- and perhaps even brought some relevance to -- the Guardian choice we made at character generation.
Anyway! On to the meat of the issue:
Originally Posted by
Orophin
I always viewed the Echo as seeing events through the perspective of another while being physically manifested in the memory.
This was my understanding of it as well, based both on Minfilia's comment about the past being a stone tablet (unchangeable) and the fact that many NPCs, such as the Lalafell from the THM quest line, recognize you in real time after you've been muddling in their memories. And, since you're really and truly physically manifested, you can remove items, thus explaining how we have [whatever it is we get from the Aurelia] in the opening Limsa quest to give to Baderon. However, I'd go out on a limb and say that item is a physical manifestation of that person's memory of that item. Your powers allow you to pull it out of the echo, but it's not (technically) the real item. For all intents and purposes it functions as though it was, but if you have a unique... necklace, let's say, and I enter your memories and then leave, taking the necklace with me, there will now be two necklaces. It's been replicated.
And if you want to worry over the physics of it and the dangerous possibility of infinite creation, we can easily just call it materialized aether and move on. Energy into matter even exists in the real world.
Originally Posted by
Anonymoose
- Let's say two people remember an event and then go their separate ways - and then you echo jump one of them and alter their memory slightly like in the THM quest, PGL quest, etc. etc. If these two people reunited, would they get into an argument over whether or not you were there?
Yes, I think they would. While my evidence is admittedly flimsy, it's the only explanation that doesn't seem to directly violate any in-game dialogue.
Originally Posted by
Anonymoose
- When we remove an item from another time (treant vine, balloonfish, etc.), are we actually just causing a copy of the item to manifest out of nowhere? If someone in an echo takes an item we have in present-day and we return without it (Standard-issue Flintlock), does it simply dematerialize?
As I said above, as far as any observer is aware, I do think we "materialize" an item out of nowhere. And it's been made clear that, as far as any observer is aware, an item left behind in an echo seems to just vanish (or at least cannot be accounted for). Whether it's properly dematerialized or left in some unreachable extra dimension isn't really worth debating. They're the same in application. The other possibility, of course, is the item being left behind in the real past (if we're time travelling), but the musketeers in the past seem no more surprised to see an extra pistol than they are to see a [player's race] standing in the middle of their guild who wasn't there mere seconds prior.
On that note, what do the people around you see when you enter an echo? If they just see you pass out (which is what it seems), then it doesn't support the idea that you're literally stepping back in time. Your body stays in the present, and your "spirit" (or whatever) moves into a new dimension.
Originally Posted by
Anonymoose
These are the things that lead me to believe we might actually time traveling to points on the real time line that have simply been anchored by people and their memories, though I'm really not committed to one idea over the other.
If we are travelling to real points then we have to accept than Minfilia, arguably the most knowledgeable NPC about the echo, is either completely wrong in its application, or lying to you. Neither seems overly likely. (Or!! If Catapult is correct, then we can assume the others merely enter memories, while the player is unique in actually stepping into the past. And that's something Minfilia wouldn't be aware of unless she was precognitive-- oh wait.) Plus, there's the fact that the player seems unable to meaningfully influence the past. We could see what the other THM in the quests was up to, but we couldn't stop her until we caught up to her in the present.
In that echo-fight with Emerick during the Limsa storyline, are the outcomes different depending on which NPC we choose to assist?
Originally Posted by
Catapult
This reminded me of something. The missing flintlock is discussed by multiple NPCs triggered in different echo-jumps, both at Maelvan's gate and the Coral Tower. The very fact that you are experiencing continuity in your echo experiences over multiple people suggests you are affecting continuity itself, not just an individual's memory of it.
Originally Posted by
Anonymoose
Reyner gives you a flintlock and then you use him as an anchor to echo back to Mannskoen (who is in a year I still can't 100% positively identify, much to my rage). Mannskoen takes the flintlock and you jump back to present day. You go upstairs, Isaudorel knows the flintlock is gone. You try to tell him Mannskoen took it, which causes you to echo back using ISAUDOREL as the anchor - and when you get there Mannskoen still knows who you are, and when you get back the damn flintlock is STILL gone.
Hold up, the flintlock is missing in the present. We didn't remove anything from the past, we brought it back there with us. It's gone in the now. The fact that it vanishes once tells us that we can take items into an echo (rather than just bring them out as we've already seen), but the fact that it remains missing once we return shouldn't be surprising. It'd be a hell of a lot more confusing if we returned from our second echo and nobody seemed to remember the drama that just went down not ten minutes earlier over the missing pistol.
As for the continuity in being recognized, Moose already came up with a theory for that and I'm inclined to agree -- not being called out as a stranger isn't proof that we've been recognized. If you were talking about something else, I will gladly bite my tongue, but for now I'm still pretty convinced we're not truly time travelling.
Originally Posted by
Catapult
I'm a firm believer that, because we are the protagonist, it is intended that our abilities are of a unique and powerful strain that most walker's don't have. It is inevitable that we will break the rules most people are familiar with.
While fun for us (I do like to be special) this would be monstrously inconvenient for trying to work out what the echo actually is. 
We have scarce clues to go on as it is, if we have to try and split them between "normal" walkers and "player" walkers it's going to double the headache. ...Or be an easy "catch all" for any inconsistencies.
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