Quote Originally Posted by Avarant View Post
I always thought the echo was responsible for simple in game stuff too. Ie. Being able to see sparkling around objective sensitive items, the orange attack circles (knowing where an attack will land), which explained to me why Fordola could dodge Lyse, she just saw the attack coming like we do.
That's not correct though - that sort of thing is not part of the lore as it's purely gameplay mechanics that are part of the game's interface that need no story explanation. Even the 'Power of the Echo' buff really has nothing to do with the Echo story wise - it's simply to make it sound better than 'buff to help you get past a difficult fight that you have already failed once'.

And Fordola's power is not like how our Echo works either - it's a Frankenstien-bastardization of certain aspects of the Echo without copying it outright (Alus after all used Krile as his model for it, and Krile's own ability in the Echo was limited to sensing beasts and animals) - Fordola merely sensed murmurs in the aether, which is how the player's character (with Urianger's guidance) was able to fairly easily overwhelm her by simply assaulting her with a massive concentrated aether blast. Fordola can't even properly view another's memories - all she gets are extremely brief snippets of memory in quick sucession, nothing like the long 'video' records we get instead.

The only thing she shares with the player's Echo ability is her immunity to Primal influence (ala tempering), everything else is wildly different to how our 'natural' Echo works, as it was by design. Alus created the Resonance after all with a view to being able to allow native-born Garleans like himself the ability to manipulate aether in their bodies (as in, use magic), so a predisposition to 'battle' orientated ability would go along with that, unlike the Echo, which Hydaelyn randomly grants to many people, even those who have no military training or combat skill.