Foreign Invasion

[sidurgu-12]

And assuming Golbez didn't eat her soul for his power (which WOULD explain why he's so powerful).

if he really was on

the moon then im guessing his power might be from zodiark.

[Cleretic]

It makes me wonder if that Voidsent we're helping make whole again has ulterior motives, but I'm guessing it's being truthful.

Honestly, the game rarely if ever has someone outright lying to us without significant signposting that they're being dishonest about it, because 'characters telling us stuff' is their main way of laying down new information. The Hecteye's most likely being truthful about his motives because, if he wasn't, then that would call everything he told us into question, which would then render all of his info about Scarmiglione and Barbariccia basically meaningless. And since his main purpose is to tell us that info, well, that character's suddenly mostly meaningless, isn't he?

I don't think they necessarily do this well every time, because sometimes the character they have give us the infodumps is confirmed by the game to be a massive liar in other contexts; how could we trust Emet-Selch to be telling the truth about Zodiark, Hydaelyn and Amaurot in Shadowbringers when his entire presence in the game world outside of talking to us was 'assuming a false identity and lying to an entire nation for his own ends'? But ultimately, that's just how it is. If someone tells us something and the game isn't suggesting they're lying about exactly that in the very same scene, the thing we're being told is probably legit, because it would usually be quite boring to seek out corroborating sources.

[Alleo]

Are we justified in going over there, killing what is going to end up being a shit ton of them along with their leaders, only to rescue a single POW of an alien race that does not even belong on our own world in the first place?

The void is a bad place. Not going to defend that. But it is THEIR place.

We dont harm those that dont attack us, we only defend ourselves from those that do. Golbez could have easily sent the dragon to us and we would have probably just left and be done with it. But instead they are right away trying to kill us.

And we know from those "meanwhile" cutscenes that Golbez plans to start a war. Of course our character doesnt know that yet, but again we also would not attack the voidsent if they left us alone.

[Necrotica]

We dont harm those that dont attack us, we only defend ourselves from those that do. Golbez could have easily sent the dragon to us and we would have probably just left and be done with it. But instead they are right away trying to kill us.

And we know from those "meanwhile" cutscenes that Golbez plans to start a war. Of course our character doesnt know that yet, but again we also would not attack the voidsent if they left us alone.

Why do we have meanwhile scenes at all? Just have us using the echo.

More and more it seems the writers regret having the echo be a thing and are trying to figure out what to do with it.

[MilkieTea]

Why do we have meanwhile scenes at all? Just have us using the echo.

More and more it seems the writers regret having the echo be a thing and are trying to figure out what to do with it.

The echo literally does not work like that. At least the WoL's echo. The WoL sees into the past, why on earth would they retcon that into anything other than that? They utilize the WoL's echo many times, to show us past scenes that happened.

[Necrotica]

The echo literally does not work like that. At least the WoL's echo. The WoL sees into the past, why on earth would they retcon that into anything other than that? They utilize the WoL's echo many times, to show us past scenes that happened.

The past includes 30 seconds ago.

[sidurgu-12]

The past includes 30 seconds ago.

it only works when we're near the thing that triggers it. so while we can see golbez through Scarmigliones crystal i dont think the echo could replace the meanwhile sections.

[Cleretic]

The WoL sees into the past based on stimuli and aetheric traces, as far as we can tell. They wouldn't have been privvy to a 'Meanwhile' going on in Garlemald, featuring characters they either haven't seen in ages or haven't even met in the first place.

It would also twist and reshape the story in a way that doesn't necessarily help at all. 'Meanwhile' scenes are a way to keep us the player up to date on what's happening while our character is busy doing something else, to let us know that things we aren't there for aren't just in stasis. It also helps to give pretense and context to big characters the WoL hasn't met yet, so that they don't come out of nowhere when we do meet them; Emet, Fantastic Dan, Zero, and Golbez are all characters that got and used that little head-start, and the scenes are almost all at the end of a patch specifically to work with that load; it's a cliffhanger that we as players know but our character doesn't, and so can't do anything about, making for a natural stopping point.

Making them Echo flashes would change that primarily by making the WoL aware of and capable of acting on them. Could you make a good story out of that? Absolutely, and other stories have worked well off similar ideas. But it doesn't really work for the game we are playing, because it immediately turns the 'Meanwhile' scenes into actionable evidence. They can't be a floating unresolved cliffhanger while the WoL and their friends do something else; instead they're now actionable evidence that they have to act on, and as a result kinda have to be moved to the start of the a content load rather than the end, because then reasonably speaking the next step is 'do something abut the fact there's an Ascian with Varis'.

And then to take the repercussions further, the fact that you've taken away the main approach to cliffhangers and are now being more reactive to these flashes means the story has to be much more episodic in structure. We also need to make the flashes less accurate; if they're the impetus for the immediate story, we can no longer build on them iteratively to make something unique, so to avoid them being too predictable we have to be sure they're missing vital context.

And finally, in following all the necessary readjustments to the story we need to make the 'Meanwhile' scenes an observable event, we have somehow reinvented That's So Raven.

[Iscah]

Are we justified in going over there, killing what is going to end up being a shit ton of them along with their leaders, only to rescue a single POW of an alien race that does not even belong on our own world in the first place?

If Azdaja was just "an alien" that we have no loyalty to, then we probably wouldn't be intervening.

But she's not just an alien; she's our friend's sister and he is desperate to save her.

Also, how many thousands of years do they have to live on Etheirys before they're allowed to be considered as "belonging" to the place? They hatched here. It's their home.

Edit to add: Also, phrasing it as "going over there to kill loads of them to rescue a prisoner" makes it sound like the killing is a core part of our intent. We just want to rescue Azdaja and get out of there, and if we could have done it without disrupting any of the locals, we probably would.

Why do we have meanwhile scenes at all? Just have us using the echo.

Others have covered why it can't just be a direct Echo vision – things need to be shown to the player that the character is not aware of.

Still, I have wondered if you could wrangle those kinds of scenes as "an Echo that the WoL witnessed much later after it ceased to be relevant, rearranged into chronological order for better storytelling".

[SentioftheHoukai]

The Warrior of Light's usage and skill in the Echo in universe can be more or less summed up as: "This power of mine responds to a need, not a desire."

I'd have thought the likelihood of us ever truly becoming "proficient" in the Echo was made clear when in the tail end of Stormblood the most we could do with it after all that we'd been though up to that point was a shitty bubble shield made of equally thin and insubstantial aether. But, that's what you get when your dear Mother Sunders every soul in the world without consent. Humanity becomes collectively less awesome.

Edit: Also, most of the "cooler" powers and abilities we'd seen the Echo facilitate up to that point are abilities seen as "evil" by the bumbling populace, like Ascian body-surfing.