What all does the Echo actually do? [Spoilers]

I've been going back through some of the previous expansion content and have been wondering what all the Echo actually does. There's multiple people who have it but the abilities it grants are not all consistent.

As far as I can tell the only major consistent ability is hearing Hadelyn's chant and having visions of the past. Other's are able to understand creatures that regular people can't (Kryle). It seems to be what allows the baddies to switch bodies and if you take gameplay as an example then it makes us progressively stronger, though I'm not sure that one counts.

Also is there a distinction between the blessing of light and the Echo? Kryle seems to refer to them as the same thing; yet when we met Midgardsormr and were effectively stripped, the Ascian was able to get into our stronghold while Minfilia was inside.

Also if anybody knows how to spoiler tag text let me know and I'll gladly edit this post. New here :P

This question is more suitable for the Lore forum, but at a very basic level, to answer your question, (and spoilered),

it's basically 'jailbreaking' the soul - specifically, allowing your mind and soul to "go beyond the boundaries of the flesh", and allows you to interact and even manipulate others' minds and souls (hence why you can view others' memories and instinctively know foreign languages you had no physical knowledge of), and also allow your own soul to break out of it's own limits, and preventing such aetheric manipulation on yourself in kind (as in, it grants immunity to Primal tempering).

Mastery of the Echo basically allows you to become a being of pure aether that no longer requires a physical form to sustain and can thus overcome physical death (like how the Ascians do). Shadowbringers revealed the Echo is actually a fragment of the Creation Magic power the Ancients possessed naturally prior to the Terminus and the Sundering, so everyone that is 'awoken' to the Echo was once an Ancient soul 12000 years before and not a 'new' soul born after the Terminus rewrote the laws of nature (this is why the Ascians also possess it while simultaneously mocking it like Lahabrea did, to them it's a mere sliver of the almost divine power that it used to be)

As for the Blessing of Light, the two are connected but also seperate. The Blessing something specifically granted to you by Hydaelyn and is basically a direct 'hotline' to her, allowing her to more easily interact with you and also allows you to materialize Crystals of Light that further empower the mandala and strengthen it.

There is still a lot of unknowns about it however.

The Echo was initially an umbrella term for a number of different powers (resistance to tempering was baseline; the WoL was able to see in the past, Minfillia could see the future, some would grow stronger the more they fought, etc.) but the failure of 1.0 and rush to the End of an Era content prevented them from fully fleshing it out. With ARR they dropped the idea that each echo-powered individual had their own unique ability… mostly. Minfilia could still see the future, in early storylines the writers played with the idea that Ascian body swapping was related to the echo, and Iceheart's ability to both manifest and control Shiva was definitely the Echo. Eventually, they went back on all of it again in 3.1. Krile mentions that the Echo manifests in everyone differently, while explaining her own powers granted by the Echo, and SQEX has stuck with this angle since.
For us players, a lot of this back and forth wasn’t apparent as we didn’t have a clear idea what The Echo was, but behind the scenes they were trying to nail it down even into Heavensward, and this is largely why it is so inconsistent and confusing.

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Originally Posted by ItMe

The Echo was initially an umbrella term for a number of different powers (resistance to tempering was baseline; the WoL was able to see in the past, Minfillia could see the future, some would grow stronger the more they fought, etc.) but the failure of 1.0 and rush to the End of an Era content prevented them from fully fleshing it out. With ARR they dropped the idea that each echo-powered individual had their own unique ability… mostly. Minfilia could still see the future, in early storylines the writers played with the idea that Ascian body swapping was related to the echo, and Iceheart's ability to both manifest and control Shiva was definitely the Echo. Eventually, they went back on all of it again in 3.1. Krile mentions that the Echo manifests in everyone differently, while explaining her own powers granted by the Echo, and SQEX has stuck with this angle since.
For us players, a lot of this back and forth wasn’t apparent as we didn’t have a clear idea what The Echo was, but behind the scenes they were trying to nail it down even into Heavensward, and this is largely why it is so inconsistent and confusing.

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And then there’s resonance

It's a MacGuffin

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Originally Posted by ItMe

The Echo was initially an umbrella term for a number of different powers (resistance to tempering was baseline; the WoL was able to see in the past, Minfillia could see the future, some would grow stronger the more they fought, etc.) but the failure of 1.0 and rush to the End of an Era content prevented them from fully fleshing it out. With ARR they dropped the idea that each echo-powered individual had their own unique ability… mostly. Minfilia could still see the future, in early storylines the writers played with the idea that Ascian body swapping was related to the echo, and Iceheart's ability to both manifest and control Shiva was definitely the Echo. Eventually, they went back on all of it again in 3.1. Krile mentions that the Echo manifests in everyone differently, while explaining her own powers granted by the Echo, and SQEX has stuck with this angle since.
For us players, a lot of this back and forth wasn’t apparent as we didn’t have a clear idea what The Echo was, but behind the scenes they were trying to nail it down even into Heavensward, and this is largely why it is so inconsistent and confusing.

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So the tempering resistance seems to be a bit hit or miss after ShB. Emet Selch flat out states that he and some other Ascians are tempered by Zodiark. Also I've seen a theory floating around that the player character is tempered by Hadelyn. If the Echo does protect against tempering then it seems more likely that it's a door that we can open. Though I personally think that we are protected because we are already claimed.

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Originally Posted by DeaconMoore

It's a MacGuffin

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It's not a MacGuffin.

The term generally refers to an object that is important to the plot, but the object itself isn't important and the story wouldn't change if you substituted some other object in the same "role".

The Echo's specific psychic abilities aren't really something you can substitute.

There are a lot of MacGuffins in the game but they generally go in the Key Items tab.

1. The Echo allows you to understand (not read) other races even if they speak a different language or this one Xaela tribe using no words only gestures. Also it doesn't translate what they say basically, you just "understand" it.

2. The Echo prevents you from being tempered. This is a bit theorycrafting here but i think it's cause Hydaelyn tempered us back then in 1.0 with the starshower, in the first cutscene, and as we know a individual that is tempered already can't be tempered by another primal.

3. Krile can talk with animals, Kriles Echo is stronger when it comes to "understanding" other beings. This caused her also much pain, same as we see with fordola cause it's something you can't really control. You just hear all the thoughts of all the people around you which is why Krila was drawn to animals in the first place.

4. We can see the past by resonating with peoples souls. As we all know we can see the past through the Echo but it's also nothing that can be forced.

5. We can travel between worlds without losing our soul. It's basically the same power zenos uses to transfer his soul through the aether into other beings and the ascians also. We have the power to trancsend the boundaries of our bodies, we just don't use it.

6. This is a kinda silly one, as far as i remember the Dev Team/Lore Writers explained wipes back then also with the Echo, it's basically a dream of what happens in the future, you just try and "dream" as long as you need to to find the best outcome and then do it...xD

Sidenotes: Midgardsomr didn't stripped us of our Echo, only of the connection to hydaelyn and the crystals of light. We still had our Echo, tempering doesn't just vanish when you cut the connection to the primal. We were still immune against other primals and saw the past in some cases.

The nature of the Echo is a question answered by the story. It gets answered differently at different parts of the story as you learn more about it.

Spoilers

At first it's just something that allows you to see echos of the past. Then it's something that shields you from primals too. Then it's something that doesn't shield you from primals, but it means your influence is greater than the primal's so that you could even temper the primal and Zenos does just that with it to control Shinryu. Throughout the story there are a lot of references to how the echo comes about by having enough souls. In Shadowbringers you learn that having enough souls brings you back on par with the ancient ascians and their level of senses.

From what I understand throughout the game so far, and I may be wrong. It is also what allows us to re live a battle over and over again until we find the outcome of the future that allows us to succeed. So also a lore friendly way as to why we can 'die' multiple times within a trial or dungeon, but still complete it as if it were only our first try.

For Zenos, being he also had the echo it was similar to constantly playing a game of chess, but every other move each made was a check mate and we were locked in a stale mate

As stated above it does more than just that. What I do not believe it does is makes us 'Hydaelyn's chosen', she just chose people who possessed the echo to be her 'chosen'.

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Originally Posted by Ranaku

5. We can travel between worlds without losing our soul. It's basically the same power zenos uses to transfer his soul through the aether into other beings and the ascians also. We have the power to trancsend the boundaries of our bodies, we just don't use it.

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If you're referring to the WoL travelling to the First in body, that had nothing to do with the Echo and simply because the Exarch finally mastered his dimensional travel spell so it would transport you properly - the Archons being summoned to the First in spirit only were horrible mistakes due to him mucking up the spell and it "closing on those whose fates are most intwined with yours". And travel to the Thirteenth (the Void) was due to magiteknical shennigans Cid and the Ironworks wrought on the Cloud of Darkness's portal that they managed to brute force open, again the Echo had nothing do do with it.

And regular teleportation is mundane anad used by people without the Echo, the only safety requirement is you need to have a reasonable amount of aether in your body in order to teleport safely, otherwise it could be deadly.

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Originally Posted by Ranaku

6. This is a kinda silly one, as far as i remember the Dev Team/Lore Writers explained wipes back then also with the Echo, it's basically a dream of what happens in the future, you just try and "dream" as long as you need to to find the best outcome and then do it...xD

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Originally Posted by Faafetai

From what I understand throughout the game so far, and I may be wrong. It is also what allows us to re live a battle over and over again until we find the outcome of the future that allows us to succeed. So also a lore friendly way as to why we can 'die' multiple times within a trial or dungeon, but still complete it as if it were only our first try.

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Citation please, because as far as I was aware that has never been stated anywhere, ever, either in game or out of it. Repeating duties or dungeons has no connection to the story, and KOing outside an instanced duty or trial is not death, but merely unconsciousness (hence the term 'KO' - 'Knocked Out'). As far as the story goes, you do a duty or dungeon once for story purposes and that's all, any other times are independent of the narrative and purely for gameplay purposes.

The only exceptions to this a) 'Hard Mode' dungeons which are a second trip through that dungeon or trial, and circmstances have changed this time because time has passed; and b) the Minstrel's Ballad trials are of course not even occuring in reality, but simply your overactive imagination playing on the Wandering Minstrel's 'embellishments' of your previous battles. So really, repeating dungeons, trials and raids over and over again in the Duty Finder is merely gameplay and story segregation. The narrative assumes you complete each dungeon, trial or raid only once.

And the 'power of the Echo' is again just a buff with no actual story connection, it's just a fancy way gameplay wise of saying "this buff will help get you the player through this". It has no connection to the actual Echo story wise.

Well it give all the things you say and it let you see in to the further for some seconds (if I am not wrong). But over all it's the same as a primal influence.

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Originally Posted by Enkidoh

If you're referring to the WoL travelling to the First in body, that had nothing to do with the Echo and simply because the Exarch finally mastered his dimensional travel spell so it would transport you properly - the Archons being summoned to the First in spirit only were horrible mistakes due to him mucking up the spell and it "closing on those whose fates are most intwined with yours". And travel to the Thirteenth (the Void) was due to magiteknical shennigans Cid and the Ironworks wrought on the Cloud of Darkness's portal that they managed to brute force open, again the Echo had nothing do do with it.

And regular teleportation is mundane anad used by people without the Echo, the only safety requirement is you need to have a reasonable amount of aether in your body in order to teleport safely, otherwise it could be deadly.





Citation please, because as far as I was aware that has never been stated anywhere, ever, either in game or out of it. Repeating duties or dungeons has no connection to the story, and KOing outside an instanced duty or trial is not death, but merely unconsciousness (hence the term 'KO' - 'Knocked Out'). As far as the story goes, you do a duty or dungeon once for story purposes and that's all, any other times are independent of the narrative and purely for gameplay purposes.

The only exceptions to this a) 'Hard Mode' dungeons which are a second trip through that dungeon or trial, and circmstances have changed this time because time has passed; and b) the Minstrel's Ballad trials are of course not even occuring in reality, but simply your overactive imagination playing on the Wandering Minstrel's 'embellishments' of your previous battles. So really, repeating dungeons, trials and raids over and over again in the Duty Finder is merely gameplay and story segregation. The narrative assumes you complete each dungeon, trial or raid only once.

And the 'power of the Echo' is again just a buff with no actual story connection, it's just a fancy way gameplay wise of saying "this buff will help get you the player through this". It has no connection to the actual Echo story wise.

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From what I gather you only do each dungeon, trial and raid only once, wipes are pretty much just handwaved as you seeing a bad outcome, and you know, not doing that. There is some hint to the WoL "seeing AOE markers" as Fordola can predict movements similarly to us. I think there was a bit of a talk about the latter too with the company of heroes wiping due to not seeing the "markers", but I can't really find any sources on that.

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Originally Posted by Xirean

Also if anybody knows how to spoiler tag text let me know and I'll gladly edit this post. New here :P

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Do you mean like this?

example

That is done by adding [hb] around the text you want to hide (with a /hb in the last bracket of course).

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Originally Posted by Iscah

It's not a MacGuffin.

The term generally refers to an object that is important to the plot, but the object itself isn't important and the story wouldn't change if you substituted some other object in the same "role".

The Echo's specific psychic abilities aren't really something you can substitute.

There are a lot of MacGuffins in the game but they generally go in the Key Items tab.

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You could sub the echo with a rare crystal if you wanted to or anything else needed for the excuse they use the echo to justify the players ability to avoid x, y, z where the npcs don't.

You could even write the echo out really if you wanted.

It's a Macguffin.

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Originally Posted by DeaconMoore

You could sub the echo with a rare crystal if you wanted to or anything else needed for the excuse they use the echo to justify the players ability to avoid x, y, z where the npcs don't.

You could even write the echo out really if you wanted.

It's a Macguffin.

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I think it's more plot more than a Macguffin, but these are semantics.

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Originally Posted by DeaconMoore

You could sub the echo with a rare crystal if you wanted to or anything else needed for the excuse they use the echo to justify the players ability to avoid x, y, z where the npcs don't.

You could even write the echo out really if you wanted.

It's a Macguffin.

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That's not exactly how MacGuffins work, though. A MacGuffin is specifically a plot device required to motivate the character onto the path necessary for the narrative -- i.e., generally a thing to go fetch -- but unimportant to the story in any other way. I.e., it is only meaningful as the match you strike to get the plotline fuse burning, and in no other way. I'd argue that's not the case here; the Echo itself isn't the character's motivation ("I must understand the Echo, and the entirety of this story is in service of that goal"), though you could maybe argue it was moreso that in 1.x; though it certainly helps us in figuring out what we're doing next, the motivation for the WoL isn't the Echo itself. I'd argue the Echo is, instead, a tool we use throughout the story. And without that tool, you need to come up with another way for us to understand foreign cultures whose language we wouldn't otherwise speak, etc.

(In addition, as we learn more about the nature of the Echo towards the end of Shadowbringers, I'd say it gains additional plot relevance.)

Is it contrived? Maybe.

Is it a plot device? Definitely.

Is it a MacGuffin specifically? Nope.

As for the Echo itself, I may be misremembering -- it's been a While -- but didn't the Ul'dah storyline in 1.x literally involve Echo-powered time travel? I seem to recall not just witnessing the Very Unfortunate Goobbue Event at the parade (doable via Echo) but also receiving a flower from Ascilia during it (which requires actual interaction). And the parade was something like 10 years before the actual time 1.x is set; Minfilia was still a child (and going by her birth name of Ascilia) during the parade and hadn't yet been orphaned (the parade is where that happened), etc.

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Originally Posted by van_arn

And then there’s resonance

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Resonance is just bootleg Echo. Fordola's is literally copied from Krile.

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Originally Posted by Packetdancer

As for the Echo itself, I may be misremembering -- it's been a While -- but didn't the Ul'dah storyline in 1.x literally involve Echo-powered time travel? I seem to recall not just witnessing the Very Unfortunate Goobbue Event at the parade (doable via Echo) but also receiving a flower from Ascilia during it (which requires actual interaction). And the parade was something like 10 years before the actual time 1.x is set; Minfilia was still a child (and going by her birth name of Ascilia) during the parade and hadn't yet been orphaned (the parade is where that happened), etc.

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Yes all that happened in the 1.0 storyline but Fernewalls kind of hand waved it. The same thing happened as well in the 1.0 Alchemist story quest. We used the echo for a vision and ended up creating a potion that we brought back with us.

What Fern basically had said was we were going to the past but what we did never affected the time line like a butterfly effect.

Edit: the echo was wonky in 1.0

The Echo and aether in general are like The Force in Star Wars. They do whatever the plot needs at the time.

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Originally Posted by HollowedDoll

From what I gather you only do each dungeon, trial and raid only once, wipes are pretty much just handwaved as you seeing a bad outcome, and you know, not doing that. There is some hint to the WoL "seeing AOE markers" as Fordola can predict movements similarly to us. I think there was a bit of a talk about the latter too with the company of heroes wiping due to not seeing the "markers", but I can't really find any sources on that.

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The echo is not how we know an aoe or attack is going out, Its us feeling aetherial density in an area rising or the boss looks like its about to do something showing a "tell" (like a boss raising its arm to the side). Any combat trained person is able to do this. We know its the the echo since trusts know when an attack is gonna happen and none of them have the echo. Fordolas power is not the same as what we do in a fight, she's able to see the attack by looking at the persons soul and sees what they are planning to do.

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Originally Posted by Rymi64

Any combat trained person is able to do this. We know its the the echo since trusts know when an attack is gonna happen and none of them have the echo.

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I mean the alternative is trusts all playing like DRGs.. so..

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Originally Posted by HollowedDoll

I mean the alternative is trusts all playing like DRGs.. so..

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Hilarious. Point being its not the echo its just combat training. Another example is the thancred role play instance if you wanna use that logic.

I honestly like the Echo being at least part of the reason we can sense the "tells".

Nothing that much that I can tell other than seeing the past.

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Originally Posted by hynaku

Nothing that much that I can tell other than seeing the past.

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Seeing ascians at all times?