"Answers" mark 3.

[Xine]

Minfillia also explains to not actually being able to 100% understand what the Echo is or how exactly people end up with it. They could be born with it, or they could simply get it from the seeing the starshower. Since even the one who claims to know the most about it in-game isn't 100% sure on it, I'm not sure we can use her words 100% either. I mean....a good couple of centuries ago we thought the planet Earth was flat until it was proven that it was in fact round. This may be one of those things that we'll never truly know unless a Dev, or even Hydalaen tells us specifically.

[Kicha]

That's a little bit different. One group of people thought the earth was flat, that wasn't the consensus of the entire world. Ancient greeks knew that the earth was round way before the Europeans decided to test that theory. But yes, I do agree that we do not know 100% all the capabilities of the Echo, but just going off of how it has been behaving so far, we can say for certain it has not shown that it can show us the future.
Also, I'm not so sure about the starshower triggering the Echo anymore. I mean, yes, in the 1.0 story the hero saw the starshower, and so did all the others in the Path of the 12. But if you started in 2.0+, there is no starshower. You just have the power of the Echo. Maybe for 2.0 it was simply granted to us by Hydaelyn? /shrug