The Echo, and Timelines

[DamianFatale]

So, I have an intellectual thought on the echo. If you die, and come back to life, are you waking up in a new timeline every time? Is your character eternally dying, and being reborn anew in a timeline where you aren't dead? Its been pondering my mind lately.

[FJerome]

The theory I'm going with is the Echo is just showing you potential futures and you ping through them until you find the route to success.

[Cipher_Zaabiz]

It's like yetis in discworld. When u die, u just jump back to the last "save point" and try this anew so you won't die.

There are exceptions though, like the time, middy sealed your powers within you, it just overpowered your blessings of hyadelin.

[Anonymoose]

Technically speaking, according to the game world, you never die, you just get knocked out and then your body auto-returns as a defense mechanism.

[Neophyte]

Technically speaking, according to the game world, you never die, you just get knocked out and then your body auto-returns as a defense mechanism.

This. Also Phoenix down and Ressurection spells only cure the status 'incapacitated', else we could've used a phoenix down/rezz to save Haurchfaunt. D:

[Kallera]

Technically speaking, according to the game world, you never die, you just get knocked out and then your body auto-returns as a defense mechanism.

Two things:

1. so if we use the echo to "look back into our own memories"(like with df runs or the anima's quest's version of the vault) is it kinda of like a lucid dream where we visualize what may happen depending on how we act? and where death/ failure/ eaten by fish is little more than say waking up from a dream? can duty finder play into this?

2. ok, technically we do not die right? What about the passage of time? if we get knocked unconcious or some similar fate happens, wouldn't time keep going? What resets the situation? or, are all df failures "using the echo", and all df successes real?

Yes, I understand there some gameplay story separation involved here. but I'm interested in understanding how using the echo in memories can result in different experiences. it'd be cool if it was like a lucid dream you can tap into.

[Anonymoose]

DISCLAIMER:
None of the following is Truth. It is my speculative opinion, something that is prone to changing with more information.

EDIT:
Wow, that's way more than I intended to type. I get the feeling I'll be quoting bits of it for years, though, lol.

Two things:

The way the Echo interacts with memories is its most apparent function, and thus it is often the first way its existence is noticed at all. By virtue of that, its interaction with memory becomes the default way we think of its being. That's only reinforced in English, where it was given a name that literally means "to experience again by reflection". It's as though it was named by the NPCs rather than the devs.

But the Echo is so much more than memories and visions, and thus not everything the Echo has a part in must incorporate them. It does a great many things. Let's use the Japanese name: The Power to Surpass. You were unable to overcome your situation, but (because you have the Echo) you were granted the power to surpass that obstacle. How and why? I suppose we're free to muse, and we have way more options than memories and visions.

I understand there some gameplay story separation involved here.

Precisely.

We're well past the "lore singularity" here. The answers, should we come up with them, have no in-world bearing whatsoever. They reflect our experiences as players. The Warrior of Light doesn't see the user interface.

You mentioned the Anima quest, where we re-conquer the Vault. That's a good example, because Japanese, German, and French all leave it at: Revisit the highlights of your career! / Queue up! / Good job! English added this whole paragraph about how it's just a re-enactment in your mind, presumably because they foresaw: Why are the Heavens' Ward still alive?

Side note:
I'm actually kind of amazed, too. The same journal entry says that Gerolt wants you to revisit your greatest battles from "over the years"
and for the first time ever we weren't inundated with "SEE, THE TIME BUBBLE IS TRAAASH!!!1!"

Imho, we're spoiled a bit when they do backbends to avoid asking us to accept that sometimes things happen: Because vidya james! ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
We'd do well to keep in mind that we sometimes ask an unfair amount when it comes to preserving immersion on the player's side of the screen.

Trying to factor in that wipes happen, and the time it took them to happen, might be as futile as trying to factor in that, according to the game clock, you've eaten five whole cakes whilst in the midst of unceasing mortal combat for ten straight days. The community as a whole struggles so hard to "lore-out" the Duty Finder, yet is hilariously unconcerned (by comparison, I mean) with that we draw upon a metabolic wellspring from an alternate dimension where we're apparently storing all of our bodily waste (until one glorious day).

Alright. Weight off my shoulders. Let's go deeper.

What if...

WHAT IF, INDEED! Once we've Inception'd game mechanic lore into this many layers, I imagine that (much like the canon-ocity of Hildibrand), the player is free to come up with whatever they want.

Maybe you were knocked out and returned to the entrance rather than an aetheryte because vidya james even your subconscious is so damned determined to see this through that it returned to the last place it knew it was safe.

Maybe, canonically, you never wiped at all and are just out-of-world resetting to a save point, as Cipher said. Maybe only the successful run counts, and Hydaelyn just knew to hit you with the Echo like the Blessing of Light in Praetorium because vidya james she, being so deeply connected to the both corporeal world and her champion, can gauge what will overwhelm them. Like FJerome said, maybe you're just envisioning the failures.

Maybe your character does have walking, lucid daydreams. They did in 1.0!

My head hurts and my eyes won't uncross.

What is a Roulette? Are you re-imagining it? Are you imagining those tomes? Wait, how am I carrying around thousands of tomes? How are they even considered rare at this point? And why is Rowena only interested in one subject at a time!? Why weren't Esoterics in Amdapor last time I was here!? Why are there more of them because I'm imaging running it with someone else who wasn't there last time?

Personally, I confess that I tend to write off that whole top layer of player experience (over-simplifying it to basic elements). The grind, repetition, content recycling, etc. all gets swept into the bin with the improbable existence and behavior of mounts and minions, Triad Card depictions, crossover events, holiday celebrations, and that I change my clothes in public, carry hundreds of ponzes of fish in my pockets, and that the whole world is perfectly comfortable pausing after every sentence until I, the Warrior of Light, Press [A].

But maybe some snarky journal entries in Patch 3.4+ will establish new vistas of player experience lore explaining (even in a tongue-in-cheek way) minutia in the user interface and the duty finder and device input. I never expected the journal would say, "You reenanct / reenvision".

VIDYA JAMES!
¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[Cilia]

Wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey stuff ahead.

Ahem.

There are three possibilities considering this I have... considered.

1. Hydaelyn is our Observer.
-BlazBlue nerds will understand this well. Effectively, all of our deaths (and indeed the sequence of events that led us to the current state) are mere possibilities as to how things could play out. However, as the Goddess of the world Hydaelyn has the power of an Observer, essentially letting her choose the timeline and what eventualities are "real" while simultaneously preventing her from intervening directly. So we do die - or rather, other "us"es die - but the "us" that is currently alive and fighting the good fight is but one of many, many possible "us"es. It's wonky, I know, and complicated, but it's the best I can do.

2. We're Echo parasites a la the Sahagin Elder.
-Self-explanatory. It's kind of like how KotOR II incorporated gameplay elements into the story; seems unlikely though.

3. We just pass out and are reflexively / automatically teleported to our home point (or the start of the dungeon).

... or, you know, there's no complex lore reason explaining it. There isn't always one.

[AutumnHarvestwind]

(( or we are pulling a silent hill 3 moment and

ValtielZodiark drags our body to revive it, we must give birth to our God. WE MUST.

[Enkidoh]

Again, I'm just going to put it down to gameplay and story segregation - narrative wise you only ever travel into a dungeon or raid or duty once. Concepts like Duty Roulette are ignored by the storyline.

The only times you travel back into a dungeon a second time are for the hard mode version (the hard mode storylines are usually attempts are made to clean out or restore the dungeon after the player went into it, only for the authorities to discover we didn't really do a very good job and that there is still something evil in there, and we're roped into dealing with it). So narrative wise, repeating a dungeon is ignored by the game's storyline, you only ever fought through it once.

"BUUUUT ENKI!!!" I hear you say. "What about things like atma books directing you to do a certain dungeon? Or the anima weapon quests doing the same?" Well, again narrative wise that is not actually part of the story despite appearances. You're being told to enter it by a game menu, not part of the storyline. There are situations where sidequests involve a certain dungeon (specifically, some of the Grand Company quests coincide with a separate sidequest to unlock the Aurum Vale and Dzmael Darkhold), but those seem to be exceptions, and even they can be handwaved away that despite being separate stories, actually are concurrent in the narrative (in other words, despite accessing those quests separately, story wise you did them both at the same time).

This was confirmed back during one of the Fanfests when Ferne explained that the game's narrative does not flow according to how the player might play through content - it instead has it's own set narrative flow that ignores gameplay (this was specifically used to explain why a player could do the level 50 CUL quest featuring making a meal for a certain Sultana of Ul'dah, even after having done the 2.55 story where... you know.. she was kind of put on a bus for an extended period and considered for all intents and purposes, deader than dead (of course that particular bus came back, but we didn't know it at the time. ).

So basically, regardless of how you undertake content in the game, the game's storyline has a specific, structured chronology that ignores in what order players may actually undertake it, so a little suspension of disbelief is required here to make it all work.