What all can be done to the echo.

We don't see a lot of alternations being done to the echo. I want to say outside of it being copied we don't have any other hints as to what can be done to someone's echo ability. For instance do you think someone could alter it to be triggered more often? Like how Fordola's resonant is shown to be triggered more often. Or could it be manipulated to pick up memories more often from a certain person or type of area? I know Misija used her resonant as sort of a spy weapon due to hers being a copy of Mikoto's future sight. Like maybe it got altered to trigger more often at battle sites. Or around the WoL in an unknown to the person is being used as a spy kind of way.

Honestly, in my opinion the Echo is one of the most difficult parts of the lore to define. In the end ARR sort of relegated it to be more of a plot device than an actual organic piece of lore and its frequency, potency, powers, and manner it can be altered vary wildly person-to-person as the plot demands.

In 1.0, the Echo allowed us to (arguably) physically appear and interact with the past instead of just getting a flashback with static. In a random cutscene with animation the likes of which we'll never see again (but with the most boring music imaginable), Y'shtola was able to alter our Echo back then in one instance when she kicked us out of the Echo and into the present right before a tsunami slammed into the ship. She was also able to jump into a different Echo "vision" we had, the feedback causing the WoL and Y'shtola to fly apart when it ended.

In case you want to see the cutscene I described: https://youtu.be/jyB1iuB-Bkw?si=sSZsWq-69T87DPYq&t=499

I actually think the thing they writers most likely to do, and indeed have, isn't to actually alter the Echo as it stands (largely because it's super vaguely defined as Mikko said), but rather to add in an element of unreliability to it. Like how the Exarch and Elidibus flashbacks in Shadowbringers were very obviously spotty and hiding information, or in the Endwalker patches, flashbacks so far-flung that they're providing nothing resembling useful info (some of which weren't really Echo flashbacks, but serve the same purpose). You can start seeing them alongside other abstract and artistic ways of depicting past events, too, like Emet's it-turns-out incomplete account of Amaurot, or the phase transitions in Tsukuyomi or Eden's Promise. So yeah, I think if we see curveballs thrown at us, it's more likely to be that the Echo vision we're being shown isn't the whole truth, or an actionable truth.

Now if you're talking about other people who have the Echo, all bets are off, because they've never been especially clear about what that means. The core writers never really push it that far--Krile's got a different sort of Echo vision to us, but rarely ever uses it. Matsuno liked using it for Mikoto and Misija, but that definitely seems like a 'him' thing. So not only is it hard to tell what they could do, it also doesn't seem likely that they'd do much of anything.

I'm probably going to ramble more about things you didn't ask about than things you did, and my perspective is rooted in lore so old it might not even be relevant, so ... apologies in advance for just all of that. But the question did get me thinking.

Last chance to opt out of a text wall...!

Out-of-world, the Echo has been primarily a contrived psychic power acting as a storytelling device and convenience generator. In-world, it originally spurred us to find our own answers and trust no one (which, looking back, was a good idea) and later it got pretty deeply entwined with a lot of topics we're (ostensibly) leaving behind.

(And even the "universal translator" aspect is blunted by the decision to establish the Common Tongue, whatever name you want to call it, as a descendant of the Ancient world to justify Vrandtic being similar enough to Eorzean for the story to function.)

I think a big factor is, "What do people think should be done about the Echo?" - whereby "people" are (out-of-world) "the writers" and (in-world) "the characters".

Consider:

The "jailbreaking of the soul" (for lack of a better term) grants so much power to those gifted with it (recall: the potential for an aetherial wellspring beyond conventional measure; the potential to transcend the flesh and death itself) that I suspect many in-world fear knowledge of it - and how to awaken it - getting out at all, and would prefer it be forgotten along with those who spurred its awakening around the Calamities for 12,000 years. But also I doubt the writers will cease relying on its storytelling devices entirely at least as far as the WoL is concerned.

There's a cost-benefit consideration for continuing to prominently feature the Echo, and one for choosing to let it mostly fade from relevance, too, depending on the story SE wants to tell.

Considering the "jailbreaking of the soul" doesn't seem able to grant powers not associated with sensitivity to aether, especially spiritual aether and "souls", I think some of the possibilities are limited. To pull an ancient joke out of my knapsack, it's not like getting sprayed with toxic waste in a comic book; it's not a grab-bag of superpowers; no one randomly gets the ability to shapeshift into a lime. Hells, even futuresight seemed to really push the envelope. The way I looked at the Echo for years, early on, it seemed manifest differently for everyone because everyone is different, not because it was inherently had infinite, random potential. (Though, maybe, by now, internally, all bets are off. We did, in fact, get canon Echo futuresight, in the end.)

The way I had interpreted the story at the time, Krile's manifestation of the Echo was the natural result of her specific soul, body, mind, memories, etc. being subjected to that awakening, so of course it was deeply unstable when those "settings" were wholesale copy/pasted onto Fordola.

For that reason, I suspect we'd have a harder time "altering" it than we would finding ways for it to simply manifest differently, and for people who have it to develop the ability to use it in differently.

So, with all that in mind...

In my opinion, we're likely to get better results considering the uniqueness of individuals than trying to make the power itself fresher and cooler for its own sake.

I'd be down to explore what became of those who accepted Hydaelyn's guidance and now have nothing to follow. I'd be down to explore what became of those who awoke to the Echo but never even came to understand what it is (not often considered since 1.x). I'd be down to revisit the idea that some people might abuse it, or worse, that society might persecute those who have it.

I can only think of one specific power off the top of my head that I'd love to see explored regardless of which individual got it: You know how the Warrior of Light is not individual Azem-the-Ancient, but is suggested to share many qualities with them by being another person built on the same soul? And how the shade of Hythlodaeus could see Ardbert and the Warrior of Light shared such a core? Imagine if someone could resonate with that part of the souls of others. To intuitively know the character and traits others are most likely to incline towards, even if they've lived a life that made it more likely for something else to manifest. You could really get through to people like that...which, depending on your intentions...

That said, if they go the route of keeping it prominent, I'd love to see more 1.x-style Echo. Running a dungeon through it in 6.x made me nostalgic for the days you could re-create a scene in your mind and play with it in ways that didn't really happen; have conversations with people as if you were there even though those conversations never happened.

Imagine we're interacting with a scene in Sharlayan and Moenbryda walks in. We'd be able to have one last conversation even if it doesn't really exist.

Probably some potential there.

See the past, see the future, see the present, avoid tempering, talk to animals, speak every language, take over primals and become immortal. Those are the abilities I can think of off the top of my head. The Echo seems to be an "echo" of the multitude of abilities Ancients had, so it can probably do a bunch of different things given they could do a bunch of different things.

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Originally Posted by Anonymoose

That said, if they go the route of keeping it prominent, I'd love to see more 1.x-style Echo. Running a dungeon through it in 6.x made me nostalgic for the days you could re-create a scene in your mind and play with it in ways that didn't really happen; have conversations with people as if you were there even though those conversations never happened.

Imagine we're interacting with a scene in Sharlayan and Moenbryda walks in. We'd be able to have one last conversation even if it doesn't really exist.

Probably some potential there.

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I have always figured that the reason we don't get Echo flashbacks like 1.0's is because they were really confusing; slipping between the 'past' and 'present' was super subtle and unclear, which makes some storylines an utter nightmare to keep track of in the moment. (I felt like I had the most difficulty with Gridania's.) But then, that difficulty largely came from it being very unclear if/when the time things were taking place had changed because very few characters visibly changed.

FFXIV probably could do this better now, because we'd be able to roughly date a scene with, say, Alphinaud by what outfit he's wearing. ...but given what I've seen people get confused by, I think it'd still be a bit much for a lot of players, and I'm not sure it actually adds a lot more than an Echo flashback as they've existed in the live game.

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Originally Posted by Cleretic

I have always figured that the reason we don't get Echo flashbacks like 1.0's is because they were really confusing;

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The 100-page thread where we finally realized that every opening story included a large number of 10-year Echo jumps marked only by a subtle (and sometimes glitchy) "whoosh" sound was arguably the catalyst for the creation of the lore forum so we could be safely relocated out of the localization forum after we started using it as a de facto World Setting Quality Assurance campfire <nervous sweatdrop>

It was a really cool storytelling device and a really cool way to introduce the Echo ... except for the fact that it was not only subtle enough to appear as though the events were happening in one time in linear succession until the epiphany, it was so subtle that the epiphany itself was undermined by the inability to recognize / remember which scenes should be reinterpreted, and we had no way to re-experience them. There was no NG+, there was no Unending Journey, the EXP grind was prohibitive, and the barriers to recording quality video of the game were pretty high at the time.

I expected that as long as they didn't try to make it ambiguous when you were in an Echo again, and/or at least marked the "in-Echo state" more clearly, everything would be fine, so it also felt (to me) like an over-correction and net loss - a(n admittedly mild) disappointment - that we went straight from there to sepia-toned, zero-exploration, zero-interaction flashbacks forever after. I probably would have just slapped a subtle, shifting, dreamlike, iridescent filter over the edges of the screen and called it a day, lol.

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Originally Posted by Anonymoose

I expected that as long as they didn't try to make it ambiguous when you were in an Echo again, and/or at least marked the "in-Echo state" more clearly, everything would be fine, so it also felt (to me) like an over-correction and net loss - a(n admittedly mild) disappointment - that we went straight from there to sepia-toned, zero-exploration, zero-interaction flashbacks forever after. I probably would have just slapped a subtle, shifting, dreamlike, iridescent filter over the edges of the screen and called it a day, lol.

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The sepia was probably done specifically to nail down 'THIS IS THE PAST', so that nobody ever gets confused again. Probably overkill, but I don't blame them for the overcorrection, and it'd probably be more confusing to change it now, we've got a vocabulary going.

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Originally Posted by Cleretic

The sepia was probably done specifically to nail down 'THIS IS THE PAST', so that nobody ever gets confused again. Probably overkill, but I don't blame them for the overcorrection, and it'd probably be more confusing to change it now, we've got a vocabulary going.

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Personally though I doubt it was specificially to prevent confusion about where the Echo began and reality 'ended', as the confusion with 1.0's Echo was only really present at the beginning of the original game (during the original 1.0 starting city storyline), where the player's character was bouncing around in and out of other people's memories of ten years earlier uncontrollably and present day events were concurrently fusing with those that happened a decade before when the Archons first arrived in Eorzea. Once they joined the Path of the Twelve though and Minfilia instructed them to "use the power of the Echo", they got a handle on it and could use it "at will" (gameplay wise the game would actually prompt you to use the Echo as a choice when necessary, although this was somewhat of an illusion of choice as naturally to continue in the relevant quest you had to accept it), which meant that there was no longer any confusion about if you were in an Echo vision or not.

And as Professor Anonymoose said, even before that happened, the Echo was preceeded by a very subtle gong sound and woosh that was barely noticeable at the time, but reviewing old cutscenes of 1.0, it's amazing how obvious it is when you're actually aware of it and know what to listen for. Of course I could speculate what that gong/tolling bell really was, but I won't, given it's long been retconned out anyway and is now irrelevant.

Really, I believe that the reason why SE changed a vision through the Echo into a grainy, static-filled sepia-toned video recording was to overcome the unfortunate implications of being able to use a telepathic ability to view another's memories whenever you wish as being essentially violating that person mentally - mind rape in other words (further underlined by also retconning Minfilia in ARR into lamenting that Echo users cannot use the Echo whenever they wish, unlike her earlier instruction of the player's character in 1.0 in being able to do exactly that).

Not that I fault SE at all for feeling that way and changing it for ARR though of course (and I have to admit, the grainy old-fashioned VHS recording style of the Echo now is remarkably effective in a stylistic way if nothing else, but that just might be the 80's and 90's kid that I am talking.). :D

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Originally Posted by Enkidoh

Not that I fault SE at all for feeling that way and changing it for ARR though of course (and I have to admit, the grainy old-fashioned VHS recording style of the Echo now is remarkably effective in a stylistic way if nothing else, but that just might be the 80's and 90's kid that I am talking.). :D

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Yeah, I'll say that I actually like the visual effects for the Echo, although now that I'm recording a bunch of footage I do wish that it was maybe something that was only there for the intro/outro and then faded for the bulk of the scene, it can be kind of annoying when the color temperatures of the shots I'm going between change that wildly. I still like the effect, it especially seems to get across that this is pretty imprecise and maybe not reliable; it feels kinda like tuning into a TV station that you aren't getting great reception on.

And hell, Echo flashbacks being in sepia are a long way down from the main complaints I have when recording cutscenes. I'd kill for the ability to set weather and time of day, especially because I'm pretty sure the tech is in there for it; the game knows how to set the weather to everlasting light or the burning skies when you look at cutscenes during those parts of the story, they don't have to use the current time and weather. But implementing that would probably be a gift for exactly twelve people, and is pretty far beside the point.

Another thing I wondered about was if you could block the echo like how Magneto and Juggernaut's helmets work. I knew about the 1.0 interactions. If someone were to try and tinker with a person's echo (if again such a thing were possible) would the Blessing of Light stop it? As it does feel as though the Echo as an ability is tied to one's soul and we know that warping of one's aether of any kind gets blocked by the blessing.

I'm definitely sure they have some way to control the weather as I want to say there is an option in Gpose to pause the time of day after you've gone into Gpose. Heck I want to say that's part of the lighting issue in the current character creator where we might see a bright sunny day but in reality there's a thunderstorm happening in a layer that you wouldn't normally see.

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Originally Posted by SannaR

Another thing I wondered about was if you could block the echo like how Magneto and Juggernaut's helmets work. I knew about the 1.0 interactions. If someone were to try and tinker with a person's echo (if again such a thing were possible) would the Blessing of Light stop it? As it does feel as though the Echo as an ability is tied to one's soul and we know that warping of one's aether of any kind gets blocked by the blessing.

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There's definitely room for 'interference', so to speak, because it's not an omniscient view. It clearly taps into the soul somehow, so not only does that open the possibility of facing issues when the soul's a bit jacked-up, like with 5.3 Elidibus, that also opens up the possibility that there's a way to block or redirect that connection.

Granted, I'd expect a redirect more than a block, because the Echo is famously unreliable even after we learned how to use it better. What value would there be in a character we deliberately can't read, if we can't reliably read characters anyway? But the notion of a character deliberately pointing our visions somewhere else entirely, that could have some cool value, especially if it's someone who's following us and so we'd reasonably get a bunch of windows into. Like, imagine if that's something Wuk Lamat does in Dawntrail (not that she would, she is an open book with a third grade reading level); she's constantly around, but every time an Echo vision kicks in, it's from someone else in the scene, and the visions are much more tangential than they usually are, possibly to the point of even being misleading. And it just keeps happening, eventually you realize there something actively wrong, but you can't even be sure until you're alone in a room with her, get an Echo vision, and it's about a bug in the corner and it becomes REALLY clear she's diverting it.