Echo anyone?

[Enkidoh]

Ok i'm sure others have noticed currently the echo is a major part of this game's lore and story. It is a native talent held by few and explains neatly the phenomenon of why certain characters can be revived and others cannot. And it allows us to view past events we were not witness to as if we were there. But really SE has not fully used this unique gift to full advantage. I suggest they change that.

What I am suggesting is expansion of the echo feature, for instance created in the world several random spawning white circles on the ground. When a player walks or rides into the circle a random past event as simple as a dialogue or even a past and now removed CS from Eorzea past flashes up for viewing. Things like the story of how the primal Gilgamesh was summoned to wander, stories removed with 1.0, visions of how the world looked before the Calamity, rips and tears in the fabric of time. It can even be used to elaborate how the warriors of darkness came to be. I believe this kind of content would attract players back out into the world and because they are random occurring and viewable only once would keep players looking for them and collecting them. For the purpose of the feature introduce a journal which is filled in whenever a scene or dialogue is encountered we can't view them again but we can read the true history of our world.

I believe this sort of feature would be less taxing on the development team as they could drop a dozen or so every maintenance, and because they are random spawning the content would always be fresh and rewarding. Achievements and trophies can be added later for loremaster achievements related to this. And SE could lighten the load on extraneous filler quests and extra reward items for completing filler quests. Hildi is fun and entertaining but I feel a lot of what is introduced through those type of quests should be more easily communicated without a long development process. I feel this would be an excellent use of the Echo, and would keep players interested, whats more it would expand SE's pool of usable content for future development they could easily see what players are interested in and develop those stories further.

This isn't too dissimilar to how version 1.0 handled the Echo - certain quests would literally ask you to 'Use the power of the Echo?" and doing so would trigger an Echo-scene. Sadly however because the way the Echo is implemented has been changed in ARR, this no longer really 'fits' (in 1.0 there was virtually zero visual difference when in an Echo scene or not, where as here in ARR the Echo is clearly defined like viewing an old grainy video) - a shame, as I really liked that function in 1.0, especially when it was used in the original class quests.

I don't really think it would attract people out into the world again, as you said so yourself, once a player has found and viewed this hypothetical content, they won't see it again, making this little more than the current Sightseeing Log. It's a nice idea, but I think a Datalog/lore journal would probably work better as it wouldn't require such a massive amount of development resources (cutscenes are very costly in terms of development time, even when they're just static dialogue).

As for a couple of your other points: Gilgamesh isn't a Primal, he's... a living person from Planet R (FFV's world) who was originally a villain in FFV. He ended up being thrown into the Void at the end of that game and has since become a kind of wanderer of the Void, which is used to explain his re-occurring appearances in successive FF games. So no real explanation is necessary as to why he's now in Hydaelyn as FFXIV's lore easily explains that - he escaped from the Void into Hydaelyn because the aetheric boundary between the material world and the Void is extremely weak due to the Calamity (the same reason why Hydaelyn is full of Voidsent like imps and ahriman). No more explanation is necessary.

As for the pre-Calamity Eorzea, sadly whenever I see people mention this, I have a feeling they mean they want to see the 1.0 Eorzea, which will never happen. Not just because it was rendered with a totally different engine to the game engine that ARR runs under, because ARR replaces it, 1.0 has been retconned in every way. So if we ever do get Echo scenes of life before the Calamity, it is guaranteed that the scene will be rendered using ARR's engine instead of 1.0's Crystal Tools, and lore/narration would be retconned to fit in with ARR's story. Which would just disappoint a lot of players.

Remember, ARR is not so much a sequel to version 1.0, but more a reboot that replaces the original game in every way, including story. Things on 1.0 like the 'Calamity' were simply a convenient way to explain the changes between the two games and to send the old game out with a bang.