Echo and Blessing of light, post endwalker retcon

[Necrotica]

So according to this new version of lore.

Bless of Light-Granted by Hydaelyn. Immunity to Tempering. Occasional miraculous shielding from massive enemy attacks like Ultima.

Echo-Granted to some when they have a vision of the Final Days. Ability to have visions of past/future. Translate all speech. Anticipate enemy attacks. Merge with other people that have the Echo. Merge with Primals. Shield self and others from Tempering.

Any edits or missing abilities?

[KageTokage]

I'm not seeing what the "retcon" is as all of the mentioned points were established already.

The only thing they did was openly clarify that the Echo can pull memories from the environment rather then strictly other people as we've already seen it happen before.

[Anonymoose]

I think, to most people, retcon means "remove it and pretend it didn't happen" (which everyone hates and FFXIV almost never does). I call those "subtraction retcons" because there are other ways to retroactively alter continuity.

FFXIV follows what I call the "addition retcon" template. This is when the story goes back and re-frames what we "knew" so that we understand it a different way that wasn't intended back then but doesn't contradict anything. Additive retcons make changes to the setting in "season 5" feel natural even if they weren't intended in "season 1".

It does feel like there's a bit of that in play with the Echo/Blessing.


During the early game, it looked like "The Echo" was a mysterious power that (A) blocked primal tempering, (B) facilitated communication with Hydaelyn, and (C) allowed one to transcend the limits of the soul, being able to read salient memories and understand what people intended to communicate even without knowing their language. Meanwhile, there was also "The Blessing of Light" which was akin to divine intervention projected through Hydaelyn's gifts, the crystals of Light.

It looks like Endwalker is "clarifying a mistaken assumption".

The Ancients all possessed abilities we associate with the Echo, but it wasn't what provided protection from tempering. Instead, that was a "Traveler's Ward" woven by Venat for when she acted as the Azem and left Amaurot. It looks like the Travelers' Ward also went along for the ride when copied from Krile to Zenos, lol.

[Necrotica]

I think, to most people, retcon means "remove it and pretend it didn't happen" (which everyone hates and FFXIV almost never does). I call those "subtraction retcons" because there are other ways to retroactively alter continuity.

FFXIV follows what I call the "addition retcon" template. This is when the story goes back and re-frames what we "knew" so that we understand it a different way that wasn't intended back then but doesn't contradict anything. Additive retcons make changes to the setting in "season 5" feel natural even if they weren't intended in "season 1".

It does feel like there's a bit of that in play with the Echo/Blessing.


During the early game, it looked like "The Echo" was a mysterious power that (A) blocked primal tempering, (B) facilitated communication with Hydaelyn, and (C) allowed one to transcend the limits of the soul, being able to read salient memories and understand what people intended to communicate even without knowing their language. Meanwhile, there was also "The Blessing of Light" which was akin to divine intervention projected through Hydaelyn's gifts, the crystals of Light.

It looks like Endwalker is "clarifying a mistaken assumption".

The Ancients all possessed abilities we associate with the Echo, but it wasn't what provided protection from tempering. Instead, that was a "Traveler's Ward" woven by Venat for when she acted as the Azem and left Amaurot. It looks like the Travelers' Ward also went along for the ride when copied from Krile to Zenos, lol.

The Scions directly state it is the Echo that prevents tempering in ARR. Now it is the Blessing of Light. That is a retcon. Or at best 'unreliable narrator' if you want to use that copout.

[Jandor]

The Scions directly state it is the Echo that prevents tempering in ARR. Now it is the Blessing of Light. That is a retcon. Or at best 'unreliable narrator' if you want to use that copout.

Unreliable narrator has been used loads throughout FFXIV history, it's even woven in to the lore books they sell. They like to leave a path open to change things in the future, which is just good sense for a long running MMO.

[RyuDragnier]

The Scions directly state it is the Echo that prevents tempering in ARR. Now it is the Blessing of Light. That is a retcon. Or at best 'unreliable narrator' if you want to use that copout.

It's not really a copout considering nobody knew what the Blessing of Light actually WAS, or even how the Echo worked. They just made assumptions.

[Remedi]

I think, to most people, retcon means "remove it and pretend it didn't happen" (which everyone hates and FFXIV almost never does). I call those "subtraction retcons" because there are other ways to retroactively alter continuity.

FFXIV follows what I call the "addition retcon" template. This is when the story goes back and re-frames what we "knew" so that we understand it a different way that wasn't intended back then but doesn't contradict anything. Additive retcons make changes to the setting in "season 5" feel natural even if they weren't intended in "season 1".

It does feel like there's a bit of that in play with the Echo/Blessing.


During the early game, it looked like "The Echo" was a mysterious power that (A) blocked primal tempering, (B) facilitated communication with Hydaelyn, and (C) allowed one to transcend the limits of the soul, being able to read salient memories and understand what people intended to communicate even without knowing their language. Meanwhile, there was also "The Blessing of Light" which was akin to divine intervention projected through Hydaelyn's gifts, the crystals of Light.

It looks like Endwalker is "clarifying a mistaken assumption".

The Ancients all possessed abilities we associate with the Echo, but it wasn't what provided protection from tempering. Instead, that was a "Traveler's Ward" woven by Venat for when she acted as the Azem and left Amaurot. It looks like the Travelers' Ward also went along for the ride when copied from Krile to Zenos, lol.

I think it creates small pocket of problems during HW's ravana's arc, but since we started regaining the blessing and we had 1/6 I think they'll just say that the ward was at a fraction of it's power. There might else that I'm missing but I'm not remembering atm

[SaberMaxwell]

Yes Moose I liked your post before the edit. You're just that good.

Or I'm from the future

[Anonymoose]

I see it as both.

Out-of-world, yeah, it's pretty clear the writing team changed their minds and edited some things.

In-world, they were able to deliver those changes as, "The Scions studied a phenomenon, made conclusions, got more data, and it turns out they didn't have it quite right." while not removing material or creating lasting contradictions.

Because of the former, some will argue it's a "retcon".
Because of the latter, some will argue that it's not.

I argue: If we split retroactive continuity into subtractive and additive, we honor that both sides have a point, lol.

Additive retcons pay a "we made it follow internal logic" tax for editing the lore. It's skilled writing during a long story.

[RyuDragnier]

I see it as both.

Out-of-world, yeah, it's pretty clear the writing team changed their minds and edited some things.

In-world, they were able to deliver those changes as, "The Scions studied a phenomenon, made conclusions, got more data, and it turns out they didn't have it quite right." while not removing material or creating lasting contradictions.

Because of the former, some will argue it's a "retcon".
Because of the latter, some will argue that it's not.

I argue: If we split retroactive continuity into subtractive and additive, we honor that both sides have a point, lol.

Additive retcons pay a "we made it follow internal logic" tax for editing the lore. It's skilled writing during a long story.

I would say that technically it's a retcon in both out-of-world and in-world, but retcons aren't necessarily bad. TVTropes has multiple examples of retcons, several bad, several good.

Backported Development: When someone's characterization in flashbacks is tweaked to more closely resemble their current self; a retcon to address Characterization Marches On.
Canon Discontinuity: Previous events are treated as if they never happened.
Cerebus Retcon: Sometimes a result of Cerebus Syndrome that makes a past event more serious as part of a shift to drama.
Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: A character disappeared from the narrative without explanation.
Revision: A continuity alteration that doesn't directly contradict any previous material.
Rewrite: A retcon that openly overwrites the facts of the previous continuity.
Orwellian Retcon: The prior events that contradict the new continuity get rewritten.
Cosmic Retcon: An in-story event alters reality, which causes a retcon.
Retconjuration: An in-story ability to alter reality, which causes a retcon.
Remember the New Guy?: A new character is introduced, but is retconned to have been part of the story all along.

While some may see them as more Rewrite Retcons (I can understand why), I don't personally see it as the case, since a lot of information we were given we knew nothing about. IMO, EW has been giving out a lot of Revision Retcons, as the changes have not directly contradicted anything prior, and have only given us new information explaining and clarifying things we didn't have all the knowledge on.