>>3852946
Irvine started out as a Cid. Not necessarily Cid Kramer. But an airship pilot. And as you know, airships were grounded some 15 years ago due to radio interference. And Garden, (according to Cid) was only established 10 years ago.

In that time, Cid Kramer became Edea's husband and "knight". It's reasonable we were supposed to see a young Cid in Laguna's era, which got recycled into Irvine. They don't really explore that, so we never really see Cid as a Sorceress Knight. NORG is the one that points out they're married and that they've been "tricked" somehow. But that doesn't make sense because the orders didn't come from Cid, but NORG's subordinate. Even Squall is confused, because isn't that the point of SeeD? And NORG is like "GUURRR,YOU FAILED!" (that's the point).

If you imagine Cid and Irvine as the same character. Then what NORG would be saying is that Irvine missed on purpose.
Then imagine during the Battle of Gardens, if it was Cid telling Squall to forget his duty and save Rinoa. It would be echoing what he started to tell Seifer at the beginning of the game, "I don't want any of you to be robots".

When Rinoa talks about her fear of being left behind, like they're someone else when they're in SeeD mode. Irvine sympathizes with a line about watching the one you love disappear. As if that's happened to him before.