What all does the Echo actually do? [Spoilers]

[Enkidoh]

5. We can travel between worlds without losing our soul. It's basically the same power zenos uses to transfer his soul through the aether into other beings and the ascians also. We have the power to trancsend the boundaries of our bodies, we just don't use it.

If you're referring to the WoL travelling to the First in body, that had nothing to do with the Echo and simply because the Exarch finally mastered his dimensional travel spell so it would transport you properly - the Archons being summoned to the First in spirit only were horrible mistakes due to him mucking up the spell and it "closing on those whose fates are most intwined with yours". And travel to the Thirteenth (the Void) was due to magiteknical shennigans Cid and the Ironworks wrought on the Cloud of Darkness's portal that they managed to brute force open, again the Echo had nothing do do with it.

And regular teleportation is mundane anad used by people without the Echo, the only safety requirement is you need to have a reasonable amount of aether in your body in order to teleport safely, otherwise it could be deadly.

6. This is a kinda silly one, as far as i remember the Dev Team/Lore Writers explained wipes back then also with the Echo, it's basically a dream of what happens in the future, you just try and "dream" as long as you need to to find the best outcome and then do it...xD

From what I understand throughout the game so far, and I may be wrong. It is also what allows us to re live a battle over and over again until we find the outcome of the future that allows us to succeed. So also a lore friendly way as to why we can 'die' multiple times within a trial or dungeon, but still complete it as if it were only our first try.

Citation please, because as far as I was aware that has never been stated anywhere, ever, either in game or out of it. Repeating duties or dungeons has no connection to the story, and KOing outside an instanced duty or trial is not death, but merely unconsciousness (hence the term 'KO' - 'Knocked Out'). As far as the story goes, you do a duty or dungeon once for story purposes and that's all, any other times are independent of the narrative and purely for gameplay purposes.

The only exceptions to this a) 'Hard Mode' dungeons which are a second trip through that dungeon or trial, and circmstances have changed this time because time has passed; and b) the Minstrel's Ballad trials are of course not even occuring in reality, but simply your overactive imagination playing on the Wandering Minstrel's 'embellishments' of your previous battles. So really, repeating dungeons, trials and raids over and over again in the Duty Finder is merely gameplay and story segregation. The narrative assumes you complete each dungeon, trial or raid only once.

And the 'power of the Echo' is again just a buff with no actual story connection, it's just a fancy way gameplay wise of saying "this buff will help get you the player through this". It has no connection to the actual Echo story wise.

[SamsaraTrickstar]

Well it give all the things you say and it let you see in to the further for some seconds (if I am not wrong). But over all it's the same as a primal influence.

[HollowedDoll]

If you're referring to the WoL travelling to the First in body, that had nothing to do with the Echo and simply because the Exarch finally mastered his dimensional travel spell so it would transport you properly - the Archons being summoned to the First in spirit only were horrible mistakes due to him mucking up the spell and it "closing on those whose fates are most intwined with yours". And travel to the Thirteenth (the Void) was due to magiteknical shennigans Cid and the Ironworks wrought on the Cloud of Darkness's portal that they managed to brute force open, again the Echo had nothing do do with it.

And regular teleportation is mundane anad used by people without the Echo, the only safety requirement is you need to have a reasonable amount of aether in your body in order to teleport safely, otherwise it could be deadly.





Citation please, because as far as I was aware that has never been stated anywhere, ever, either in game or out of it. Repeating duties or dungeons has no connection to the story, and KOing outside an instanced duty or trial is not death, but merely unconsciousness (hence the term 'KO' - 'Knocked Out'). As far as the story goes, you do a duty or dungeon once for story purposes and that's all, any other times are independent of the narrative and purely for gameplay purposes.

The only exceptions to this a) 'Hard Mode' dungeons which are a second trip through that dungeon or trial, and circmstances have changed this time because time has passed; and b) the Minstrel's Ballad trials are of course not even occuring in reality, but simply your overactive imagination playing on the Wandering Minstrel's 'embellishments' of your previous battles. So really, repeating dungeons, trials and raids over and over again in the Duty Finder is merely gameplay and story segregation. The narrative assumes you complete each dungeon, trial or raid only once.

And the 'power of the Echo' is again just a buff with no actual story connection, it's just a fancy way gameplay wise of saying "this buff will help get you the player through this". It has no connection to the actual Echo story wise.

From what I gather you only do each dungeon, trial and raid only once, wipes are pretty much just handwaved as you seeing a bad outcome, and you know, not doing that. There is some hint to the WoL "seeing AOE markers" as Fordola can predict movements similarly to us. I think there was a bit of a talk about the latter too with the company of heroes wiping due to not seeing the "markers", but I can't really find any sources on that.

[ItMe]

Also if anybody knows how to spoiler tag text let me know and I'll gladly edit this post. New here :P

Do you mean like this?

example

That is done by adding [hb] around the text you want to hide (with a /hb in the last bracket of course).

[DeaconMoore]

It's not a MacGuffin.

The term generally refers to an object that is important to the plot, but the object itself isn't important and the story wouldn't change if you substituted some other object in the same "role".

The Echo's specific psychic abilities aren't really something you can substitute.

There are a lot of MacGuffins in the game but they generally go in the Key Items tab.

You could sub the echo with a rare crystal if you wanted to or anything else needed for the excuse they use the echo to justify the players ability to avoid x, y, z where the npcs don't.

You could even write the echo out really if you wanted.

It's a Macguffin.

[Xirean]

You could sub the echo with a rare crystal if you wanted to or anything else needed for the excuse they use the echo to justify the players ability to avoid x, y, z where the npcs don't.

You could even write the echo out really if you wanted.

It's a Macguffin.

I think it's more plot more than a Macguffin, but these are semantics.

[Packetdancer]

You could sub the echo with a rare crystal if you wanted to or anything else needed for the excuse they use the echo to justify the players ability to avoid x, y, z where the npcs don't.

You could even write the echo out really if you wanted.

It's a Macguffin.

That's not exactly how MacGuffins work, though. A MacGuffin is specifically a plot device required to motivate the character onto the path necessary for the narrative -- i.e., generally a thing to go fetch -- but unimportant to the story in any other way. I.e., it is only meaningful as the match you strike to get the plotline fuse burning, and in no other way. I'd argue that's not the case here; the Echo itself isn't the character's motivation ("I must understand the Echo, and the entirety of this story is in service of that goal"), though you could maybe argue it was moreso that in 1.x; though it certainly helps us in figuring out what we're doing next, the motivation for the WoL isn't the Echo itself. I'd argue the Echo is, instead, a tool we use throughout the story. And without that tool, you need to come up with another way for us to understand foreign cultures whose language we wouldn't otherwise speak, etc.

(In addition, as we learn more about the nature of the Echo towards the end of Shadowbringers, I'd say it gains additional plot relevance.)

Is it contrived? Maybe.

Is it a plot device? Definitely.

Is it a MacGuffin specifically? Nope.

[Packetdancer]

As for the Echo itself, I may be misremembering -- it's been a While -- but didn't the Ul'dah storyline in 1.x literally involve Echo-powered time travel? I seem to recall not just witnessing the Very Unfortunate Goobbue Event at the parade (doable via Echo) but also receiving a flower from Ascilia during it (which requires actual interaction). And the parade was something like 10 years before the actual time 1.x is set; Minfilia was still a child (and going by her birth name of Ascilia) during the parade and hadn't yet been orphaned (the parade is where that happened), etc.

[TheMightyMollusk]

And then there’s resonance

Resonance is just bootleg Echo. Fordola's is literally copied from Krile.

[Rannie]

As for the Echo itself, I may be misremembering -- it's been a While -- but didn't the Ul'dah storyline in 1.x literally involve Echo-powered time travel? I seem to recall not just witnessing the Very Unfortunate Goobbue Event at the parade (doable via Echo) but also receiving a flower from Ascilia during it (which requires actual interaction). And the parade was something like 10 years before the actual time 1.x is set; Minfilia was still a child (and going by her birth name of Ascilia) during the parade and hadn't yet been orphaned (the parade is where that happened), etc.

Yes all that happened in the 1.0 storyline but Fernewalls kind of hand waved it. The same thing happened as well in the 1.0 Alchemist story quest. We used the echo for a vision and ended up creating a potion that we brought back with us.

What Fern basically had said was we were going to the past but what we did never affected the time line like a butterfly effect.

Edit: the echo was wonky in 1.0