The 5.2 dungeon looks like it'll be a lore bomb

[Eloah]

You might be the one slightly off the track. His Creation magic alone is enough to recreate Amaurot, and since the Ascians don't grow older in the common sense, their memory doesn't decay either. Especially with how much Hades/Emet-Selch cares about Amaurot, it is unlikely that he would forget.

Also, the Echo is not like a convenient external hard drive / extra memory of the one possessing it, rather, it shows you the past of other individuals.

No, I'm not. But I think I know why no one else is getting it. I made the comment after translating the Japanese title of the new patch. And the actual Japanese term is Reminisce, not Echo as we know it. I think people are being thrown off since the English title uses the term Echo in two different forms, and since the dev's mentioned the Echo mechanic will be involved, they are stuck on what we know and what has been explained to us.

But since the Japanese term is different, I'm able to understand what is being implied and applied that backwards to our previous experience in Amaurot. Since in Amaurot it's Reminiscing about the moment the Star "fell"

I think that's why no one is understanding me. There is a dissonance between the two terms and what they imply.

Also about him forgetting things. It's not about him simply forgetting, but the finer details he wants to remember, like color, placement, time, etc.

Additionally though, I mentioned we don't know a whole lot about the Echo, and we know the Ascians have it too. For all we know, the Echo is a form of creation magic. In fact I'd bet it is.

[RicaRuin]

I was talking about something from 5.0, so why do you try to explain it with the 5.2 Patch Title that held no relevance at that point?

[Eloah]

I was talking about something from 5.0, so why do you try to explain it with the 5.2 Patch Title that held no relevance at that point?

Because this is a thread about 5.2 and how the dungeon would work with the Echo.

[Erendis]

Does it mean we are going back to the bottom of the sea again? What would be the reason for us to go there?

Wonder if Hythlodeus would have any ideas on how to return souls to the bodies? (Hmmm.)

[LineageRazor]

Additionally though, I mentioned we don't know a whole lot about the Echo, and we know the Ascians have it too. For all we know, the Echo is a form of creation magic. In fact I'd bet it is.

I'm pretty sure I understand what you're getting at with the Echo, that Emet is using it to create a perfect recreation of the past, because relying on his own memory would be, well, unreliable, as no one can maintain perfect memory for twelve thousand years.

However, I see this as just fan speculation. There's been no hint in-game that Emet required any special help to recreate Amaurat. Additionally, your speculation depends on the assumption that Ancients' memories degrade over time, just as ours do. But Ancients are not like us - in fact, they are played up to be practically gods. This COULD, in fact, include flawless and limitless memory (and even if not flawless and limitless, certainly a mere twelve thousand years would be little more than an eyeblink to them, much as it is for Dragons).

I do suspect that the Echo is linked in some manner to Creation, largely in that it's a remnant of our Ancient heritage. Mortals are flawed, fractured Ancients, and that means that we have remnants and vestiges of what the Ancients had. Our ability to manipulate Aether may barely be a blip on the Ancients' radar, but it's essentially the same thing, just far more limited in scale. The Echo could be similar - though it's notable that aether manipulation is nearly universal, while Echo manifests in only a few...

[myahele]

Does it mean we are going back to the bottom of the sea again? What would be the reason for us to go there?

Wonder if Hythlodeus would have any ideas on how to return souls to the bodies? (Hmmm.)

I wonder if Hythlodaeus is still around? When referring to the shades in Amaurot, he says "too much scrutiny and we shall bust like fragile bubbles we are" it reminds me of how Pixies will disappear if they question their existence too much.

[Eloah]

I'm pretty sure I understand what you're getting at with the Echo, that Emet is using it to create a perfect recreation of the past, because relying on his own memory would be, well, unreliable, as no one can maintain perfect memory for twelve thousand years.

However, I see this as just fan speculation. There's been no hint in-game that Emet required any special help to recreate Amaurat. Additionally, your speculation depends on the assumption that Ancients' memories degrade over time, just as ours do. But Ancients are not like us - in fact, they are played up to be practically gods. This COULD, in fact, include flawless and limitless memory (and even if not flawless and limitless, certainly a mere twelve thousand years would be little more than an eyeblink to them, much as it is for Dragons).

I do suspect that the Echo is linked in some manner to Creation, largely in that it's a remnant of our Ancient heritage. Mortals are flawed, fractured Ancients, and that means that we have remnants and vestiges of what the Ancients had. Our ability to manipulate Aether may barely be a blip on the Ancients' radar, but it's essentially the same thing, just far more limited in scale. The Echo could be similar - though it's notable that aether manipulation is nearly universal, while Echo manifests in only a few...

YES!!! Finally.

I was not trying to imply that the Echo is 100% involved, more like the events taking place probably involve the Echo. And that what we experience is reminiscent of the Echo, since the Japanese term is not the term for Echo but in English it is.

I was getting so lost and confused myself in trying to explain a simple comment, that I forgot what spawned the comment in the first place. But thankfully I remembered that, and realized where the error was in my backwards explaination, lol.

Thank you for getting it.

[ObsidianFire]

I was not trying to imply that the Echo is 100% involved, more like the events taking place probably involve the Echo. And that what we experience is reminiscent of the Echo, since the Japanese term is not the term for Echo but in English it is.

It was specifically noted by Yoshida in the stream that the "Echo" mentioned in the patch title is a direct reference to the term "the Echo" in English. So it's probably the team making a pun that works only in English and Yoshida indicating that the meaning should be the same in Japanese, they just couldn't get it to work.

I think saying the Emet-Selch somehow used the Echo to help him create the copy of Amarot oversells what the Echo does and undersells how crazy awesome the Ancinets were. Both as a race and as masters of arcane knowledge. Nothing we've ever seen the Echo do so far augments our own recollections of our own memories. The Echo has always been shown to be something that lets us (or anyone else with it) see or understand knowledge other people has. We understand other people's languages, see into their pasts, feel their emotions, etc. We never see the Echo showing us things we have personally experienced though.

The Ancients meanwhile are like gods. From what we have seen, they lived extremely long lives and more then likley had the mental capacity to deal with that. The thing Emet-Slech seems to have the hardest time dealing with is how limited and diminished we are as a race when compared to how the Ancients were. To the point he and the other Ascians who are unsundered Ancients don't even think we are people. To my knowledge, none of the unsundered Ascians think 20,000 years is a long time just because it has 20,000 years. Emet-Selch seems more annoyed about the fact that he is alone, rather then for how long he as been alone. It also doesn't seem that the Ascians are bothered it takes them a few thousand years to cause a Shard to Rejoin with the Source. None of them seem to feel the need to "hurry the plan up" as it were. In fact, they attribute trying to move the plan along too fast as the reason the 13th Shard became the Void. It just doesn't seem like the Ascians care at all about how long they have been around. They don't seem to be surprised by it either. It's almost like living for more then 20,000 years is a normal thing for them to do and they're used to plans that take advantage of long time periods.

To add to all of that, the Ancients had incredible aether reserves and could create literally anything they could think up. Part of what makes Emet-Selchs recreation of Amarot so amazing is that is shows off how much aether he can manipulate and how detailed his manipulation is. Which is... an entire city's worth of buildings and AI controlled citizens on a 24-hour loop. That's a far cry from anything we've ever seen magic do before. It's also nothing like what we see the Echo do. It is what we see happen every time a Primal is summoned, just on an entirely different scale that dwarfs pretty much all the primal summonings. For a primal to be summoned, countless aether crystals are needed as is the belief of a large amount of people. And Emet-Selch can construct something on the scale of a city all by himself. Now take that that same overall level of aether control and apply it to an entire race of people who live a super long time...

Finally... we don't even know what the Echo is. What we do know is what the Ascians (specifically Lahabrea and Elidibius) think about it. And it's... rather surprising... Lahabrea directly calls it "an aberration in the aether" at one point. Elidibus calls it "a gift". So it sounds like the Echo isn't something natural to the Ascians. There's also the hang-up that the Echo is what keeps us from being Tempered, while the Ascians are both Tempered by Zoidark and have the Echo. Which begs the question of which one they got first...

[Eloah]

It was specifically noted by Yoshida in the stream that the "Echo" mentioned in the patch title is a direct reference to the term "the Echo" in English. So it's probably the team making a pun that works only in English and Yoshida indicating that the meaning should be the same in Japanese, they just couldn't get it to work... etc.

Exactly. In Japanese the term Echo would be the same as it is in English, written in katakana エコー. But the English term has various connotations, to give it those various meanings, that you just can't get in Japanese. That's why I got confused why people weren't grasping my explaination. That Dissonance between the terms.

Also it's speculated that the Echo is Hydaelyn's tempering of us. So it would seem that their version is from Zodiark.

[ObsidianFire]

The problem is that the Resonance is basically the Echo. And yet Zenos and Fordola aren't connected to Hydaelyn at all. Arenvald never mentions her either. And there's a whole group of people with the Echo in 1.0 and early 2.0 who have no idea what the Echo is. Just that it allows them to do weird stuff the people around them find odd and scary.

I also get the feeling that if the Echo was Zoidark's form of Tempering, Emet-Slech would have told us, or made some kind of reference to it. Instead he just says he and the other members of the Convocation of Fourteen were tempered by Zodiark. Actually... now that I think about it, I don't remember Emet-Selch ever referencing the Echo.

Saying that the Echo is Hydaelyn's/Zodiark's form of Tempering also wouldn't match up with how Lahabrea and Elidibus think of it. I can't think of anyone who is Tempered thinking of their Tempering as being something odd. They all seem to think it's very natural and inevitable that it would happen how it does.