The Echo - Mechanics and Boundaries

[Anonymoose]

One thing I've noticed during lore discussions is that we all have a rather different idea of how The Echo works. Often, some of our topics actually degrade into talking about the specifics for a while, so I think it's time we make a thread that just gets down to business and makes sure we don't misstate this schist anymore.

Everything we know:

• Existence of the Echo is a sign of apocalyptic change.
  This is known to the Sharlayans.

You... That was your doing. The Echo... But that would mean...

Calamity Cometh

The winds of change have already swept over Eorzea. We are only just now realizing it. The Echo has sounded... And nothing can stop it now.

Beckon of the Elementals

• Some have discerned this change, but are too traumatized to speak of it.

Scores of men and women have passed through our doors looking to find answers, and scores have embarked on quests to do just that...but their efforts have gained us little...and many have not returned. Of those few who have...not one is willing to speak of what he saw at the end of the Path. It is as if they all bore witness to a truth too terrible...or too shameful to be told.

Fade to White

• The ability is provided by an entity (likely Hydaelyn)

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

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

• Many report seeing a starshower upon their awakening.
  The meaning of the starshowers are surrounded with rumor.
  The most common rumors are that:
  • they are concurrent with the awakening of the Echo,
  • they are an ill omen of something about to happen,
    
  • those who are near where one of the falling stars landsare given some sort of power.
    • IS IT POSSIBLE THAT THE SECOND ECHO WE SEE IN EACH STORY IS THE MOMENT SOMEONE ELSE WOKE TO THE ECHO? PERHAPS ONE OF THE ARCHONS, OR ASACILIA, EMERICK (UNSEEN, BUT THE SOURCE OF THE ECHO SO HE MUST BE THERE) OR KHRIMM.

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

Unlisted:
Several NPC quotes from Fate to White where members of the
Path of the Twelve say they got their echo shortly after seeing a starshower.

• The Echo often comes with "side effects." Everyone is given different gifts.
  • The Player's is to breach the language barriers and see into hearts.
  • Minfilia's is foresight (prescience)
    

We are each blessed in different ways. While I was given the gift of farsight, the gods did not see fit to grant me with the ability to comprehend languages. What of you, Forename?

Together We Stand

As an unexpected side effect of the gift, it seems the ability to reach into the soul of another also allows some of us to understand their words without having to comprehend the sounds they utter. In short, the Echo has granted these fortunate souls mastery of every language existing on Hydaelyn.

Fade to White

CONFLICTING, OR AMBIGUOUS, INFORMATION:

• We do not know for sure if we are entering a copy of the past that we can manipulate and study, or if we are entering the actual past using someone's memory as an anchored doorway.
  • If I were to speculate, I would guess that many in-game characters assume it to be the former because nothing can be changed and the person can often catch you messing around in their head. However, in reality it is the latter, which is why you can bring items back and forth and truly gain or lose them. This is one of four major methods of time travel we see in movies. It's not Back to the Future time travel (changes a singular timeline in the past to impact the present), Terminator time travel (changing the past creates separate timelines), or Supernatural time travel (closed loops in time that don't allow for change) -- it's LOST/The Time Machine time travel (go ahead and try to change whatever you want, maybe it'll play out differently, but whatever happened happened).
• For instance, if we look at these quotes from Minfilia and Fernehalwes...

The Echo allows you to breach the wall of a person's soul, and hear the resonations of their past. You will be there in their memories, seeing things as they saw them. You may even interact with that which lies therein. However, the past is like a stone tablet. You cannot uncarve what is already written.

All three have the power of the Echo, allowing them to experience the past, interact with it, but ultimately not change the outcome of anything important (the wind created by a battleaxe swing will not start a hurricane in Garlemald).

[gahoo]

I view it as Source Code.

• You are re-living the experience of another.
• You can interact with that experience in any way you want for a set-period of time - even at times experiencing the same event multiple times and being able to live them out differently (perhaps until you get something right/figure something out).
• Your actions do not change your life and your timeline (perhaps there are alternate timelines out there that are changing -but not your timeline).

The good news is that we are not the mangled bomb-destroyed torso of a former soldier, but get to actually live in our timeline after we do what we needed to do in the echo/source code.

[Orophin]

I always viewed the Echo as seeing events through the perspective of another while being physically manifested in the memory.

The part about things not being able to be altered in the Echo doesn't seem to make sense though. Damielliot from the Alchemist quest line seems to be rustled from his coma (for lack of a better term) due to your intervention. It's not to say that he wouldn't have come out of it eventually, but it seems to be your influence that does it.

You're not invisible while in the Echos either. I believe it's the level 30 Pugilist quest line where you're trying to find a traitor within the guild (it doesn't end up being the case, but anyway...) and you Echo into a secret conversation between the person in question and a couple of cohorts, when he looks over at you and then charges at you before you Echo out of the event.

I can't think of any other Echo events offhand where your character doesn't go largely ignored by everyone else in the scene. (apart from the main storyline)

[Anonymoose]

This is why it's so ambiguous to me. I mean, the Copy of a Memory (aka Source Code) theories require that when someone recognizes that we've been in their memories (for instance, in the THM quest when the murderer realizes she's being watched and runs at you, and then realizes outside of the echo that it was you back then), we've thus entered their recollection and altered it slightly by being there. However, what if other people were there at the time?

• 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?

• • PRACTICAL EXAMPLE: Fade to White
    Minfilia tests your abilites by having you echo jump her prior conversation with the person who brought you there (Blackburn for Limsa Lominsa, the Hermet of the Wood for Gridania). Only Minfilia is still present with you, but in the echo, both of them react with surprise that you've popped in - thus confirming that you're are Woken. If we were to immediately ring Blackburn/Hermit on the shellphone, would their memory be impacted as well?
    

• 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?

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.

Damielliot is a special case because (though I haven't had time to really pick this idea apart yet) I think he is actually an undiagnosed Woken. Before we're diagnosed and brought to the Path of the Twelve, our players pass out in the story arc a few times each. I think that might be what's up with him - and it makes all events concerning him interpretable in many ways.

[Enkidoh]

Excellent thread idea by the way.

Unfortunately, after rereading the dialogue for the original storyline via screenshots the more I think that Tanaka's original development team possibly didn't fully understand their own concept of the Echo, due to many contradictions in how the Echo is shown to function and how it's referred to by npcs. An example of this is a quote by Papalymo Anonymoose mentioned which is directly contradicted by another comment made by Papalymo a short time earlier:

"The winds of change have already swept over Eorzea. We are only just now realizing it. The Echo has sounded... And nothing can stop it now!"

The trouble is, moments before, he and Yda seemed to not actually recognize the Echo after going back on an Echo-trip with your character to view Khrimm speaking with his parents and then setting the Hedgetree on fire:

Yda: "Please tell me you just saw all of that too. It wasn't a dream, because I don't dream. Or at least I never remember them if I do."
Yda: "Maybe it was a vision. Like the kind the cultists say you see if you eat moogle flesh during a full moon.
Yda: "Pinch me Papalymo, I do believe I may be dead again."
Papalymo: "No, this is no great beyond Yda. It was the past we saw. Twelve be good, it was the past! By some strange power, or someone's."

As he said the last line, it then zoomed in your character.

Considering later on he clearly mentions the Echo, and yet didn't recognize an Echo vision, struck me as very odd. Incidentally, much later in the game during the end of Future's Perfect, they again do not mention the Echo, but just refer to it in a roundabout way (as well as just seeming to be more interested in finding who or what had given the player in the first place):

From Future's Perfect (as a Gridanian): (note: much of the dialogue is spoken by the player's Path Companion and hence differs depending on which Companion you have - my one was a miqo'te GLA so the dialogue would have been different for some - naturally this is what is mentioned if your character is Gridanian):

Path Companion: "Ah, we've met, haven't we? You're Papalymo and Yda. Yes, I distinctly remember your undeniable chemistry."
Path Companion: "Did you come here to do battle with the Empire?"
Papalymo (with a noticeable smirk): "There is much you have yet to do. The Garleans can wait."
Path Companion: "I'm sorry, are you seriously suggesting I should not be trying to save Eorzea from the Empire?!"
Yda: "How can you save anything if you know not your own strength?"
Path Companion: "You say I do not know my own strength. I say that I do not care! Whether I am wise or deluded, weak or strong, I would rather do something than nothing!"
Papalymo (sarcastically): "So speaks the child of Ala Mihgo."
Yda: "Yet you have also been blessed... been woken."
Papalymo: "If you would only seek the One who gave you that power, you could be granted so much more." (He then throws something to the player which is never mentioned or revealed, while a white bird lands on a nearby fence).
Papalymo: "And it is for this that we will continue to search."
(They then disappear, as if teleporting out)
Path Companion (as they disappear): "Wait! You can not leave me so unsatisfied!"
Path Companion: "This 'One' of whom they spoke... this being that 'blessed' us. Could it be a god... or something different? Something we have yet to see? Something... more?"

So again, we come back to square one (no pun intended ). Do the Circle really understand the Echo and what it does, or are they just as clueless as the player (as Papalymo's contradictory comments during Beckon of the Elementals suggest)?

Or, most interestingly, is the very nature of the Echo not so clear cut as Minfilia made it out to be? That what she stated was the Echo was in fact only one manifestation of a far greater power, a power possibly recognized as something else by the Circle - it would definitely explain Papalymo's comments in any event.

[Catapult]

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?

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.

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.

Enkidoh, I have theorized that Yda and Papalymo's reaction is such because they don't yet understand what they are experiencing. It is only upon seeing the starshower that Papalymo puts things together in an epic "oh crap, now I get it" moment.

[Anonymoose]

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.

I swear to the Twelve, every time one of us is scanning a problem full-panoramic 270-degrees, the other is standing on the opposite wall pointing the other way like, "Dude, you blind?"

I think you're onto something with the flintlock being the key.

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.

If you can pick up in Isaudorel's memory right where you left off in Reyer's, you have to be visiting and impacting the actual timeline, right?

Then again... just because Mannskoen doesn't jump out and say "Who are you and how'd you get here, I don't remember you at the test" doesn't mean he remembers you, and if the gun simply disappeared in the echo... then...

Hm. The key is really going to be finding two different echoes triggered by two different people whereby the people in the latter echo recognize you from the first. Clearly Y'shtola, but if she's jumping around, too, then that's a given... can we find more blatant examples?

[Orophin]

Hm. The key is really going to be finding two different echoes triggered by two different people whereby the people in the latter echo recognize you from the first. Clearly Y'shtola, but if she's jumping around, too, then that's a given... can we find more blatant examples?

Hmm...I don't think there's enough multiple interactions in the class quests to find this link. I think it'd have to come from one of the other two main storylines.

[Xeia]

• The ability is provided by an entity (likely Hydaelyn)

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

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:

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.

• 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.

• 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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

[Catapult]

can we find more blatant examples?

Your relationship with Fye is a good one. You only ever meet Fye in echos. Those echos are triggered off different individuals, yet your relationship with her continues to develop.

Also, if you're worried about Y'shtola using superpowers, Papalymo might also be a better example. He has no personal experience with echo-jumping until the very end of the Gridanian story arc when you force the revelation upon him, so he couldn't be using it himself. Same goes for Thancred.