What is the extent of the WoL's powers?

[Lium]

I'm sure this has been asked before, but every now and then I see a cutscene in-game that shows the WoL doing something pretty powerful that makes me wonder, just how powerful are we, canonically?

The latest cutscene took place in the final scene of the Four Lords story.

Koryu breaks through the wards and seems to kill Genbu. The remaining auspices attempt to use their powers to trap Koryu again, but know they can't do so without Genbu.

At that point, the WoL steps forward and, along with Tenzen's spirit, unleashes a power that holds Koryu at bay long enough for Soroban to call back Genbu in a ritual, so that all the auspices, plus the WoL and Tenzen can rebuild the wards and trap Koryu back inside.

It was a pretty awesome display of power. There were similar cutscenes before this one that showed the WoL performing pretty cool feats, such as shielding people from a primal's blast, or breaking Zenos' helmet.

This could just be the writers putting cool stuff in there that's job neutral and doesn't really mean anything. "Just show the player character shoot some light or something from their hand."

Or, canonically, it's because of the Blessing of Light. Which so far, no one other than Midgardsormr seems to know anything about.

So, I'm just curious, is there anything official that shows or says how powerful the Warrior of Light is?

[Bright-Flower]

It seems to just be whatever the story wants it to be at the time. So far as I can tell, on the surface we're basically really talented adventurers, but have the blessing of light thrown in when needed. But the blessing is pretty vaguely defined.

[SannaR]

Don't forget we got told back when we first met Elidibus he said we weren't using the full force of our echo that it can do more than just understand others and prevent us from being tempered. So, it might not just be the blessing that's in flux?

[Anonymoose]

I think the best way to phrase it at this point is limitless potential, with how much of that potential we're meeting being determined by our level, lol. That's a lot more user-friendly than, "Whatever the rest of the team thinks is going to up the badassery ante."

[Brightamethyst]

As mentioned above, Elidibus straight up said that there's a lot more to the Echo than what we mostly use it for, which is writers codes for "it can be anything the story needs it to be."

[Enkidoh]

Specifically, this trope is becoming more and more apparent in regards to the Echo and the Blessing - the player's character increasingly seems to pull new powers out of thin air in tight situations (usually involving a Primal or something similar).

[Kalise]

Well, we can take Fordola as an example of what the Echo can do, combat wise. With heightened senses allowing all movements of an opponent to be heard and reacted to.

Then we have Krile as an example of non-combat effects of the Echo, allowing the sensing of other people's emotions.

We and Ysale show that the Echo can be used to look into a person's past and re-live scenarios.

Also, I believe lore-wise it allows us to see fairly far into a potential future (I.e. "Echo Bonus" in trials. We don't actually fail, we just see a potential future in which we failed and then use that knowledge to fight better) of course, not all the time, otherwise well that whole banquet fiasco could have been avoided...

This is merely just the Echo.

As the Warrior of Light, we also have Hydaelyn's Blessing, which allows us to do things such as survive Ultima (Also, strip Ultima of its primal power allowing us to overcome it), survive Midgardsormr, face Ascians without being tricked by all their jiggery pokery and what not (Though, that said, we did face Nabriales without the blessing when Midgardsormr removed it from us to see if we were worthy of having it), we even used it to pull Lahabrea out of Thancred.

Though, due to the actions of Midgardsormr and his removal of our blessing, some people theorize that the Blessing of Light is merely a shield to protect us and that our strength and capacity to do badass things is just something we're naturally talented at. Given that not only were we able to overcome the primals in the first place to GAIN the crystals for the blessing, but then when it was removed we continued to be a badass, albeit were susceptible to the Ascians doing Ascian things.

So take that for what you will. It suggests that the Echo has a lot of potential (If you want to refer to the original Japanese the direct translation is "The power to transcend") I mean, massively heightened senses, the ability to see into the past and future and all sorts of other crazy things that keep being added (Such as when we faced Lakshmi for the second time and could defend against her attacks, along with Arenvald and Fordola). While the Blessing is merely "Plot Armour" to allow us to essentially walk away from nukes without a scratch (But also using up a substantial amount of Hydaelyn's already weakened power...)

[Dreggit]

whatever the case may be, the WoL will forever be paranoid with served beverages

[Iscah]

I like to think that another aspect of our personal Echo is that it subconsiously encourages people to trust us and tell us their life stories... and more importantly be inclined to take us at our word and entrust us with important tasks or information, or believe us when we are telling the truth but the evidence isn't all that convincing.

It explains a lot of the wonkier bits of storytelling, if nothing else.

[Lambdafish]

over 9000

/10char