Crazy Personal Headcanons

[Simple_Barghest]

Less headcanon, more salt, sorry if anyone else has mentioned this already:
The Echo is useless and actively harmful, UNLESS you have Antagonist listed anywhere on your character sheet.

My reasoning:
Every time the WoL and people allied with the WoL have Echo visions, they are immensely painful headaches. Sometimes so debilitating are these visions that they are taken advantage of by people outside of Echo-user's head.
And if an Antagonist has access to the Echo, they always have the ability to use it in ways to IMMEDIATELY counteract anything related to the protag's Echo.

Examples off the top of my head, not including the HEADACHE scenes which are just standard Echo affair:
1) Stormblood, WoL gets Yotsuyu-related Echo visions. Nearly gets hit in the face, only doesn't because Lyse is there.
2) Bozja storyline. Mikoto's future visions are nearly-useless most of the time, and the few instances she tries to take advantage of them to help the WoL and the cause of the rebellion, it goes wrong. More on that later.
3) Shadowbringers. Multiple instances of the WoL getting an Echo vision that results in somebody getting away, a Sin-Eater / Cardinal Virtue getting off scott-free, somebody getting stabbed, what have you.
4) Endwalker, Melee DPS Role Quests: Echo vision striking and putting WoL down to their knees right in the middle of a horrible combat situation.
5) Heavensward, Ysayle is the only other person with the Echo there besides you. Shiva proves to be a useless transformation at multiple instances, and the one instance of it proving capable (the pursuit by BIG fucking Garlean airship), she dies the next scene after.

Meanwhile Antagonists, include:
1) Zenos, who uses his Echo to do such things as: Possessing a Primal. Becoming an Ascian after death. Eating the Mothercrystal. Becoming a Primal and breaking his way through space-and-time through battle autism.
2) Misija, topically enough, who gets the exact same future visions as Mikoto, gets to know that Mikoto ALSO got those visions instead of something else entirely, and ALSO gets an effective and powerful Primal summoning + transformation (at least until she became a boss fight in Delibird Regibird or however you spell that instance).
3) Fordola at first, who funnily enough proves both of these points. Her first bit of Echo usage includes combat precognition, warranting an entire plot bit around the revolution of Ala Mhigo where we have to create a set of tools specifically to counteract this combat precog.

The only reason the Echo existed was for exposition dialogue and flashback sequences. Every other time it's invoked, and even instances where it's used to give only exposition, it comes at a cost. It's frankly a liability, and it doesn't surprise me that after Venat "teaches" the WoL how to "use" their Echo in Elpis (a scene that infuriated me to no end), we get NO other instances of the Echo throughout the entire rest of Endwalker.

tldr plot device make upsetti spaghetti

[Simple_Barghest]

To tie up the point I was making on Fordola before I realized I was running out of text space due to unhinged rambling and ranting:
Fordola began with her combat precognition Echo, and after she was imprisoned and slowly started becoming a side-protagonist, she never uses it or seems like she has access to it anymore. And in exchange, gets a non-stop influx of negative emotions and memories from everyone around her.

[Enkidoh]

The only reason the Echo existed was for exposition dialogue and flashback sequences. Every other time it's invoked, and even instances where it's used to give only exposition, it comes at a cost. It's frankly a liability, and it doesn't surprise me that after Venat "teaches" the WoL how to "use" their Echo in Elpis (a scene that infuriated me to no end), we get NO other instances of the Echo throughout the entire rest of Endwalker.

Not true, at least, outside the EW main scenario - the EW role quests feature at least one Echo scene in them (at least, the tank one does - it's how the WoL determines the identity of the Blasphemy they're hunting as formerly a padjal).

Also Fordola's Resonance power is equally a hinderance/curse as it is a help - she doesn't even experience actual visions like the WoL does, only snippets of memory as still images shuffling quickly and uncontrollably like a broken Powerpoint presentation (she also seems to get some emotional feedback from the target as well, as when she experiences the WoL's memories, she's reduced to a quivering heap wailing "HOW ARE YOU STILL HERE? AFTER ALL THE TRAUMA AND DESPAIR YOU'VE EXPERIENCED??"). Ardbert and his friends (when they're the Warriors of Darkness) also clearly suffer discomfort when they experience the same Echo vision as the WoL in the first encounter with them.

So it is definetely a curse as well as a blessing, but I disagree that it's better or more powerful for the few antagonists that can use it (rememeber, the Echo is simply a sliver of the Creation magic/aetherial manipulation powers the Ancients possessed, watered down by the Sundering - every Echo user is the reincarnation of an Ancient/possesses an Ancient's soul, other than Zenos and Fordola whose powers were bastardized copies of Krile's Echo - the later I actually have a theory about why the Resonance worked with them, is because they were both unwoken Echo users themselves anyway, as in, they're both reincarnated Ancients too - it's why Zenos kept having dreams of the Final Days of Amaurot even long before he got the Resonant procedure.).

But that's enough thread derailing from me. :P

[Jandor]

You would think the WoL would be more inclined to try and get a handle on their echo, seeing as the Ascians and Zenos have repeatedly told us we kinda suck at using it.

Even if you didn't believe those guys, when Venat teaches you that neat 'reading the land' trick you'd think the first thing you'd do after would be to sit her down and ask her how to solve the migraine and falling over mid-battle issues you've been having.

[Lucida3b]

You would think the WoL would be more inclined to try and get a handle on their echo, seeing as the Ascians and Zenos have repeatedly told us we kinda suck at using it.

Even if you didn't believe those guys, when Venat teaches you that neat 'reading the land' trick you'd think the first thing you'd do after would be to sit her down and ask her how to solve the migraine and falling over mid-battle issues you've been having.

Personally it isnt too hard to understand why before though we never really tried to learn more since it's mysterious and the only ones that know about it are, Zenos and ascians.

[RyuDragnier]

You would think the WoL would be more inclined to try and get a handle on their echo, seeing as the Ascians and Zenos have repeatedly told us we kinda suck at using it.

Even if you didn't believe those guys, when Venat teaches you that neat 'reading the land' trick you'd think the first thing you'd do after would be to sit her down and ask her how to solve the migraine and falling over mid-battle issues you've been having.

It could simply be that to control it is a form of meditation, where you know what you want to see and must open yourself to it with the land answering you. However, peering into somebody's soul may in fact be more difficult and taxing, and thus requires the "opening" of the individual thinking of the memories and the WoL wondering just what caused whatever is happening.

[Enkidoh]

It could simply be that to control it is a form of meditation, where you know what you want to see and must open yourself to it with the land answering you. However, peering into somebody's soul may in fact be more difficult and taxing, and thus requires the "opening" of the individual thinking of the memories and the WoL wondering just what caused whatever is happening.

Thing is, 1.0 actually indeed had you learning to control the Echo at will - the first thing Minfilia does upon joining the Path of the Twelve in 1.0 (Minfilia's predecessor organization to the Scions), was that she asked you to "use the power of the Echo" as a test to see if you were truly awoken to it or not, and from then on, at points in the story the game would actually prompt you to "Use the power of the Echo?" in order to trigger an Echo vision. This was changed (and possibly retconned) in ARR however where Minfilia actually laments "it's a shame we cannot use the Echo whenever we wish", which made me facepalm when I heard her say that, and Echo visions occur automatically without any input from the player.

I suspect the meta reason for the change though was the... disturbing implications having such a power to use whenever you wish would have, namely, being able to influence someone's soul and actually peek into, and interfere with, their memories would come across as basically mind rape, even if it was for benign purposes. Having no control over it would soften this image somewhat, making not just the person whose memories are being shown but the Echo user themself as a victim of circumstance.

Either way, we've gotten way off track here.

[Rannie]

I'm starting to think our WoL likes the headaches and not being able to control them... >.<

[Lucida3b]

True, if we presume they only really had krile wouldnt most of the data relate to Krile's iteration of the echo?

[KageTokage]

I do question just how much the Garleans managed to glean about the Echo from the Resonant research.

It's implied all of the data from their various projects was being relayed back to the capital, so perhaps there's still some secrets to be found there...assuming someone else hasn't made it off with it already.