Ability to see the future: Loose plot thread?

[Iscah]

Visions can make for good drama if written correctly. I just would prefer a writer capable of doing them right being the one doing the actual writing.

Yes, you can do interesting things with visions, but that doesn't mean you have try to fit both unalterable and alterable visions into the same plot or the same person's skillset.

Also, I don't think either of those scenarios are good ones, especially if we already know whether they can be averted or not. The first one shouldn't have us trying to stop it at all, if we know the disaster is inevitable, because the audience can see a mile off that if we can't stop it then meddling is probably going to cause it – so I don't think that's the sort of vision you would portray in the first place to make for a good story.

And the second plot doesn't need to be an alterable vision to carry out that drama, and indeed there would be more point to it if the vision can't be prevented: if you see the victim not already dead but about to be killed, then you have a fixed event that the plot can pivot around. You can't avert it but you have control over what happens before and after.

[KageTokage]

I absolutely hated how they handled that plot point in Bozja and I hope it never comes back..

I'd rather be surprised by things as they come then know some vague badness is going to happen in the future, but in fuller context it ends up being a non-issue.

[Iscah]

I absolutely hated how they handled that plot point in Bozja and I hope it never comes back..

The drama over Mikoto's vision was silly. That's exactly where you should be looking at what you did see and asking what you can do around the edges of that event to make sure that when she does inevitably fall, somebody is there to catch her.

[SannaR]

I don't have a problem with Mikoto's future sight in itself. My problem was that it came from out of nowhere and how it was handled in the story. It wasn't written as good as it probably should have been.

[Cleretic]

The drama over Mikoto's vision was silly. That's exactly where you should be looking at what you did see and asking what you can do around the edges of that event to make sure that when she does inevitably fall, somebody is there to catch her.

And yet that's kind of all you can do with future sight as it was used in that story. Either what we see is true but not the whole story, or what we see can be changed so that it doesn't happen as we saw it at all. And either way, you just end up questioning what the vision added, because... well, if you saw someone falling off a cliff and that's the thing to avert, surely you would've had much the same crisis from seeing them in danger while perilously close to a cliff, right?

That doesn't make it unworkable, but it's something you need an interesting answer for, and Mikoto's visions just didn't. Again, I'd point to Xenoblade Chronicles as an example of that approach done well, but that's also a story where that concept is its Main Thing, even down to being a central gameplay mechanic (and if I'm honest, not an especially interesting one). But Xenoblade also does the latter approach, where it's possible to entirely avert the vision. That actually has some advantages storytelling-wise, because it can actually pull the trigger and show people outright dying in the visions rather than cutting away at a conspicuous point.

but even Xenoblade's approach I wouldn't be interested in seeing FFXIV do, because there's not actually that much interesting about it; Xenoblade kinda did it all. But even if they did just do all that, it still took a direction I know a lot of people who play this game would hate: that sometimes they can't change what they see not because it's some arbitrary fixed point, but because they're only human and there's only so much they can do. There's no supernatural element meaning it was impossible to save that person; they just couldn't do it even with the advance warning.

[KageTokage]

I don't have a problem with Mikoto's future sight in itself. My problem was that it came from out of nowhere and how it was handled in the story. It wasn't written as good as it probably should have been.

That's the other beef I had with it.

The Echo has been firmly established to work by reading the "memory" aether of either souls or the environment, so being able to predict the future is decidedly not something that falls within the scope of what it's previously been shown to be capable of doing and they didn't even bother trying to handwave it by saying it's predicting the flows of aether or some such (Which is how Xenoblade did it).

Prediction of the future in general has been shown to be questionable at best, and the whole founding principle of Sharlayan astrology was turning it into a more...practical art by manipulating celestial aether in order to better work for/against the futures they believe to have foreseen.

[Cassar]

I don't have a problem with Mikoto's future sight in itself. My problem was that it came from out of nowhere and how it was handled in the story. It wasn't written as good as it probably should have been.

Yeah this is pretty much how I feel. It really felt like it came out of nowhere and when I saw it the first time I was like "Wait that's a thing in this universe?? Why is no one talking about this??". You know, I would expect people to be studying this phenomenon and trying to replicate it (which they kinda did in the Bozja storyline but it didn't go anywhere).

I wanna make it clear also that I personally don't think it was written poorly and I'm not really complaining about anything, I just feel like the situation wasn't treated with the gravity it should've been. I mean come on, there's an individual in this world that can see the GODDAMN FUTURE!!! That's like the most useful ability in this entire universe!!
(Let me know if I'm overreacting lol)

[Cleretic]

Yeah this is pretty much how I feel. It really felt like it came out of nowhere and when I saw it the first time I was like "Wait that's a thing in this universe?? Why is no one talking about this??". You know, I would expect people to be studying this phenomenon and trying to replicate it (which they kinda did in the Bozja storyline but it didn't go anywhere).

They are, that's literally what the Astrologians are doing. Both Ishgardian and Sharlayan, on different scales; Sharlayan is more aimed at personal fortunes while Ishgardian reads for broader movements. Each of their schools having a relative lack of detail might actually be a benefit, considering how badly Mikoto is steered wrong by hers.

I think the balancing element for Mikoto is that she's so phenomenally bad at it that it's more of a detriment than it is a help. It mostly just serves to give her anxiety, it's in no way actually helpful and her main area of expertise is 100% unrelated. Misija's better with it (maybe because she's not overthinking it), but let's be honest, it doesn't help her overmuch either.

Maybe the reason in-universe that nobody's hankering to replicate Mikoto's situation is much the same as why the writers likely aren't too interested in using it: it's just not actually very usable.

[Iscah]

I just feel like the situation wasn't treated with the gravity it should've been. I mean come on, there's an individual in this world that can see the GODDAMN FUTURE!!! That's like the most useful ability in this entire universe!!

The thing is, it's "can see the future, but with a lot of limits that render it not very useful". She can't do it on demand and it usually doesn't show people in peril, and it sounds like it might be mostly about giving her occasional fortunate insights into how to solve a project she was personally working on.

Her full explanation if you question her about it in Bozja:

The Echo can manifest itself in myriad ways dependent on the individual. I was gifted with the ability to peer into the future.
It is a power much like prophetic dreams and divinations, and yet quite different, for such visions only tell of the future's potential.
The Echo does not show me what may happen, but what will happen.
Scholars speculate Mezaya Thousand Eyes too shared this gift, hence the alarming accuracy of the passages writ in her Divine Chronicles.
These visions are a decidedly rare occurrence, usually containing some crucial insight into matters presently unfolding before me. For better or worse, I have never had visions of an impending threat on my life or those around me.
Not that I would want to see such things, of course. Could you imagine, knowing of certain doom that cannot be avoided?
I once spoke of my visions to an acquaintance─a relatively harmless glimpse of the future─and it resulted in a terrible argument. I fear I could not bear the weight of grimmer tidings...
But that is neither here nor there. My gift is but a trivial thing. Nothing you should think to rely upon.

The way she brings up "prophetic dreams" as a reference point suggests that they might not be all that uncommon in the setting (although it could be a bad choice of words in an isolated corner of the narrative, and they've contradicted bigger things than that). We do have other things like the Namazu's "do this thing to prevent disaster" vision on one hand, and Temulun's seemingly accurate and insightful prophecies on the other – though in the latter case it is suggested that she too has the Echo.

In any case, for Mikoto specifically, there is likely little benefit in advertising her future sight abilities to others.

[KageTokage]

Maybe the reason in-universe that nobody's hankering to replicate Mikoto's situation is much the same as why the writers likely aren't too interested in using it: it's just not actually very usable.

That kind of made me question why they even bothered with it in the first place because basically every purpose it served could've been accomplished through more mundane means and it felt like it mostly served to build artificial suspense.

The main role it played in the entire mess was allowing Mikoto to be used as Resonant fodder...but they could've just as easily made Misija be an antagonistic Echo user akin to Ysayle and had her be captured strictly for her knowledge of the relic instead.