The Echo, and Timelines

[The_NPC]

I'll take my personal headcannon: 1st time u win is "real" rest are just non-stop waking nightmares made from entering a "Dream Dimension" (mentally only) & only that which u "take" or "aquire" in said place can leave with u Aethericly recreated into u'r inventory (The Tomestones were never really there.... NEVER! well cept whatever tomes u origionally got when content was new). If u fail said 1st try & have to re-DF well congrats u just palayed out a "What-if" attempt in u'r head using said "Alter-Mind realm" unconciously (to explain random gear u got from the half-run that u just go "Uh when did I... maybe at the market from that trader I can't remember?") & thus all those ppl u meat in DF (Be it pre-made or full randoms is just a crap ton of Echo users have 1 big ass shared nightmare... the PTSD is real & causeing memory confusion). as for the open world tele's NPC's explained that nicely, just we're "Special" & can do it way more than a normal person (normal non-echo ppl maybe 1 a week, echo users 4-5 a day, WoL's un-frigin-limited), I wanna know who's taking my Gil every teleport -_-*

What due u expect the the worlds most adept, fast-learning, rich, badass, God-blessed, ever-reviving Hobo... pure wide-eyed impossibility 24/7 with short bursts of Normality

[MaikoRaines]

Simplest answer...

[Shadotterdan]

Those aren't canon

[Tenkuu]

Let me start off this post by saying that your replies are always great to read for either their speculation, facts, or entertainment value. Thank you for being humble and always being kind and respectful. You're always a fun read!

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.

Simply go back to Minfilia's original exposition on the Echo, when you first meet her, for details on exactly what the Echo is supposed to give you the power to surpass/overcome. Among others, she names the barriers of people's hearts, the language barriers between different beast tribes, and the boundary between the past and the present. We also know from the Ascians that it transcends the boundaries of one's existence.

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?

Duty Finder is the same as the Journal: it's all memories that you're reliving since you can't, in lore, clear the same dungeon more than once. Once a deadly monster has been killed, it can't be re-killed in lore, after all.

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!"

I can't recall where I read this, nor was I able to find it again, but I'm pretty sure the passage of time is a normal thing in the game's lore. It seems to be that the only situation where a time bubble actually applies is within the same expansion. After all, NPCs' hair wouldn't grow if time didn't pass, nor would they be able to make speeches about certain events being in the past. It seems reasonable to assume that each expansion can cover a maximum of one year, but to be frank, events truly seemed to happen in much more of a rush in 3.0, as if it were all taking place over the course of a few weeks. In 2.0, crises were more separate with clearer breaks between them when we could easily, in lore, be doing nothing at all, with even Minfilia telling us to take some time off.

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.

Given that we're the Warrior of Light, I would say that in lore canon, wipes don't actually happen. If they did, you'd be dead rather than unconscious. Your safe point argument makes sense though as far as explaining the dungeon respawn points and shortcuts.

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

That was the Echo though, wasn't it? Ie going back to the whole thing about how the Echo allows you to walk in a person's memories and travel through time.

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?

I like to think of the Roulettes as series of grouped memories. For instance, a certain set of dungeons all remind you of one another, so in your mind they all fit into the same "Roulette" of memories that you might choose to revisit at any time. As for the tomes, how big are they supposed to be? If they're the size of coins or USB drives, it should be pretty easy to carry thousands of them around in your invisible bag. Or, like with currencies, there are single tomes each worth values of 5, 10, 20, 50 and 100. You can think of these tomes of higher values as containing more data or something. As for Rowena, she essentially has the mindset of a teenager who's constantly finding a new trend to keep up with (some would say she's more of a businesswoman in that sense, but I don't like her enough to give her any sort of respectable title).

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].

Triple Triad lore, as far as the matches go, should be something like that with every match you have with an NPC, you get a prize if you win and hand over something of your own if you lose. With regards to the cards, it's probably something like that there's a basic set of official cards, and then there are some fan-designed cards that get accepted as official cards. I mean, how would Godbert Manderville know of Calcabrina, for instance?