The echo and Hydaelyn's contact

[Enkidoh]

Irony is, in 1.0 upon immediately starting the game a player actually did see the starshower right away even before they arrived in their starting city, as it signified their awakening of the Echo (as they didn't realize it at the time, but they were immediately thrown into an Echo scene of events that transpired some ten years earlier when that city's Archon first arrived right away).

At the time no one knew what the starshower meant, although a later Echo vision in 1.0 depicted everyone in Eorzea experiencing the starshower ten years before (it was pretty much stated that was the actual moment the Echo first "sounded" and resulted in a sudden spike in people in Eorzea being awoken to it's power, and the result Sharalyan considered it a sign of impending Calamity). Back in the 1.0 era this later one was believed to have actually been the explosion of the Agrius over Silvertear Lake, but naturally the starshower was too big and high altitude for that. Of course we now know different, but back then we just didn't know squat.

Either way, SE altered things with ARR's opening depicting the starshower being shown to the player's character much later in leiu of a foreshadowing scene from ARR's climax of Lahabrea and Hydaelyn instructing the player's character to make "a Blade of Light" to banish the Ascian out, with that scene used for the awakening of the Echo, with the later starshower scene now repurposed to basically introduce Hydaelyn Herself properly, and more importantly, also depict the granting of the Blessing of Light, which is related but a different concept to the Echo.