Quote Originally Posted by kuma_aus View Post
Can someone explain the 1.X openings for me? On a reddit thread people were saying that you were playing through an Echo vision or something?
Basically, the big twist for 1.0 release was that all of the initial story cutscenes you see, actually happened 10 years prior. You were playing the game in the present, but whenever you were in a cutscene you were actually watching the past. It was done in a deliberately subtle fashion (wish a little "woosh" sound effect) so you didn't actually know this was going on at first (I didn't actually put it together till I rewatched them many years later). The cutscenes with the Path of the 12 (Minfillia) were in the present, but, despite seeing and interacting with them in the echo, you never "actually" meet any of the Circle of Knowing (Yda, Papa, Thancred, Y'shotola) until the final launch cutscene at Mor Dhona where they face off with Gaius. Except now it seems the Yda in that final cutscene (and every bit of story content since) isn't Yda.

The twist NOW is that, despite the original Yda being present in 1.0 in the initial Gridania cutscenes, no FFXIV player character has ever actually met her, 1.0 player or not.