The True Nature of The Echo

[Enkidoh]

-snip-

Be it as it seems a little too coincidental that both the merchant and Alphinaud and Alisaie just happen to be on the same carriage/ferry as the player as they arrive in Eorzea, it's not proof that the player has just magically materialized by the will of the Crystal. This should be obvious, but wouldn't the merchant and the Leveilleur siblings have, I don't know, actually noticed that? Instead the merchant wakes you up and says you were sweating and moaning in your sleep - pretty much showing that they'd been there all along.

And as for when the merchant asks you about whether that was your first time in the city or not, it's up to the player to decide whatever choice you ask (because ultimately either lead to the same result - he basically describes the city-state you're heading to, saying "no', that you've been there before, he says "Okay, then let this journeyed itinerant fill you in on a few changes that have happened since your last visit."

Even the opening movie says at the end "Amidst this great change, an adventurer, arrives in Eorzea, one whose tale is yet unwritten." There is nothing that states "Oh, they didn't just arrive, they were literally born right this minute by the Mothercrystal." I'm going to apply Occam's Razor here and just think that because the narrative assumes that the player understands that the adventurer is a foreigner arriving on a carriage to begin life as an adventurer - if they've really born right that moment by the Mothercrystal, don't you think it's odd that they start life pretending to be a foreigner arriving on a carriage in the first place? Why not just make them appear in the outskirts of the city they start in, or something? It just doesn't seem that logical to me.

Simply put, we're not new creations of the Mothercrystal, we're just average men and women born and raised elsewhere on Hydaelyn who have come to Eorzea attracted by the life of adventuring, and whom while still on the road to our new homes, is then chosen by the Mothercrystal as a recipient of the Echo, to hopefully act as Her champion against the Ascians and the Primals. That's pretty much what the story tells us.

I guess I've just been reading Scott McCloud's excellent tome Understanding Comics too much to see what he refers to as 'closure', that is, the ability to perceive and understand an entire idea from purely fragmented information based on past experiences and expectations, and thus regard the player's character in the opening as nothing more than what it appears to be - a foreign born new adventurer arriving in Eorzea, and not an obtuse and abstract concept as trying to explain a purely gameplay mechanic that is character creation in narrative terms.