Quote Originally Posted by Lucke View Post
What the wark?! Hold your chocobos Ferne! Is Minfilia from the future? I mean, we meet Ascilia in the present day for the UD story. How can they both exist at the same time? Do both versions (young and old) exist at the same time the game took place?. Ascilia could go to the Path HQ and see her older self? What the wark?

Oh man, my head hurts.
This is an incorrect assumption, is all. A very, very big chunk of the main storyline takes place in echoes - even before you know what the echo is! Before you gain control of the ability to "use the power of the echo" through the user interface, you're blindly and out-of-control jumping into and out of echoes all the time - it's not until a passerby understands what's happening to you that you're brought to the Path of the Twelve in the first place.

The very first echo you enter is in the very first quest you undertake regardless of city, when you see the starshower. After that, any time you hear a whoosh sound effect in the cutscenes, that's an echo beginning or ending.

Each city also seems to have some characters who've changed their identities since then - such as Rostnsthal once being Sthalmann (Limsa) and Milfinia once being Ascilia (Ul'dah).