What all can be done to the echo.

[Anonymoose]

I'm probably going to ramble more about things you didn't ask about than things you did, and my perspective is rooted in lore so old it might not even be relevant, so ... apologies in advance for just all of that. But the question did get me thinking.

Last chance to opt out of a text wall...!

Out-of-world, the Echo has been primarily a contrived psychic power acting as a storytelling device and convenience generator. In-world, it originally spurred us to find our own answers and trust no one (which, looking back, was a good idea) and later it got pretty deeply entwined with a lot of topics we're (ostensibly) leaving behind.

(And even the "universal translator" aspect is blunted by the decision to establish the Common Tongue, whatever name you want to call it, as a descendant of the Ancient world to justify Vrandtic being similar enough to Eorzean for the story to function.)

I think a big factor is, "What do people think should be done about the Echo?" - whereby "people" are (out-of-world) "the writers" and (in-world) "the characters".

Consider:

The "jailbreaking of the soul" (for lack of a better term) grants so much power to those gifted with it (recall: the potential for an aetherial wellspring beyond conventional measure; the potential to transcend the flesh and death itself) that I suspect many in-world fear knowledge of it - and how to awaken it - getting out at all, and would prefer it be forgotten along with those who spurred its awakening around the Calamities for 12,000 years. But also I doubt the writers will cease relying on its storytelling devices entirely at least as far as the WoL is concerned.

There's a cost-benefit consideration for continuing to prominently feature the Echo, and one for choosing to let it mostly fade from relevance, too, depending on the story SE wants to tell.

Considering the "jailbreaking of the soul" doesn't seem able to grant powers not associated with sensitivity to aether, especially spiritual aether and "souls", I think some of the possibilities are limited. To pull an ancient joke out of my knapsack, it's not like getting sprayed with toxic waste in a comic book; it's not a grab-bag of superpowers; no one randomly gets the ability to shapeshift into a lime. Hells, even futuresight seemed to really push the envelope. The way I looked at the Echo for years, early on, it seemed manifest differently for everyone because everyone is different, not because it was inherently had infinite, random potential. (Though, maybe, by now, internally, all bets are off. We did, in fact, get canon Echo futuresight, in the end.)

The way I had interpreted the story at the time, Krile's manifestation of the Echo was the natural result of her specific soul, body, mind, memories, etc. being subjected to that awakening, so of course it was deeply unstable when those "settings" were wholesale copy/pasted onto Fordola.

For that reason, I suspect we'd have a harder time "altering" it than we would finding ways for it to simply manifest differently, and for people who have it to develop the ability to use it in differently.

So, with all that in mind...

In my opinion, we're likely to get better results considering the uniqueness of individuals than trying to make the power itself fresher and cooler for its own sake.

I'd be down to explore what became of those who accepted Hydaelyn's guidance and now have nothing to follow. I'd be down to explore what became of those who awoke to the Echo but never even came to understand what it is (not often considered since 1.x). I'd be down to revisit the idea that some people might abuse it, or worse, that society might persecute those who have it.

I can only think of one specific power off the top of my head that I'd love to see explored regardless of which individual got it: You know how the Warrior of Light is not individual Azem-the-Ancient, but is suggested to share many qualities with them by being another person built on the same soul? And how the shade of Hythlodaeus could see Ardbert and the Warrior of Light shared such a core? Imagine if someone could resonate with that part of the souls of others. To intuitively know the character and traits others are most likely to incline towards, even if they've lived a life that made it more likely for something else to manifest. You could really get through to people like that...which, depending on your intentions...

That said, if they go the route of keeping it prominent, I'd love to see more 1.x-style Echo. Running a dungeon through it in 6.x made me nostalgic for the days you could re-create a scene in your mind and play with it in ways that didn't really happen; have conversations with people as if you were there even though those conversations never happened.

Imagine we're interacting with a scene in Sharlayan and Moenbryda walks in. We'd be able to have one last conversation even if it doesn't really exist.

Probably some potential there.

[Cleretic]

That said, if they go the route of keeping it prominent, I'd love to see more 1.x-style Echo. Running a dungeon through it in 6.x made me nostalgic for the days you could re-create a scene in your mind and play with it in ways that didn't really happen; have conversations with people as if you were there even though those conversations never happened.

Imagine we're interacting with a scene in Sharlayan and Moenbryda walks in. We'd be able to have one last conversation even if it doesn't really exist.

Probably some potential there.

I have always figured that the reason we don't get Echo flashbacks like 1.0's is because they were really confusing; slipping between the 'past' and 'present' was super subtle and unclear, which makes some storylines an utter nightmare to keep track of in the moment. (I felt like I had the most difficulty with Gridania's.) But then, that difficulty largely came from it being very unclear if/when the time things were taking place had changed because very few characters visibly changed.

FFXIV probably could do this better now, because we'd be able to roughly date a scene with, say, Alphinaud by what outfit he's wearing. ...but given what I've seen people get confused by, I think it'd still be a bit much for a lot of players, and I'm not sure it actually adds a lot more than an Echo flashback as they've existed in the live game.

[Anonymoose]

I have always figured that the reason we don't get Echo flashbacks like 1.0's is because they were really confusing;

The 100-page thread where we finally realized that every opening story included a large number of 10-year Echo jumps marked only by a subtle (and sometimes glitchy) "whoosh" sound was arguably the catalyst for the creation of the lore forum so we could be safely relocated out of the localization forum after we started using it as a de facto World Setting Quality Assurance campfire <nervous sweatdrop>

It was a really cool storytelling device and a really cool way to introduce the Echo ... except for the fact that it was not only subtle enough to appear as though the events were happening in one time in linear succession until the epiphany, it was so subtle that the epiphany itself was undermined by the inability to recognize / remember which scenes should be reinterpreted, and we had no way to re-experience them. There was no NG+, there was no Unending Journey, the EXP grind was prohibitive, and the barriers to recording quality video of the game were pretty high at the time.

I expected that as long as they didn't try to make it ambiguous when you were in an Echo again, and/or at least marked the "in-Echo state" more clearly, everything would be fine, so it also felt (to me) like an over-correction and net loss - a(n admittedly mild) disappointment - that we went straight from there to sepia-toned, zero-exploration, zero-interaction flashbacks forever after. I probably would have just slapped a subtle, shifting, dreamlike, iridescent filter over the edges of the screen and called it a day, lol.

[Cleretic]

I expected that as long as they didn't try to make it ambiguous when you were in an Echo again, and/or at least marked the "in-Echo state" more clearly, everything would be fine, so it also felt (to me) like an over-correction and net loss - a(n admittedly mild) disappointment - that we went straight from there to sepia-toned, zero-exploration, zero-interaction flashbacks forever after. I probably would have just slapped a subtle, shifting, dreamlike, iridescent filter over the edges of the screen and called it a day, lol.

The sepia was probably done specifically to nail down 'THIS IS THE PAST', so that nobody ever gets confused again. Probably overkill, but I don't blame them for the overcorrection, and it'd probably be more confusing to change it now, we've got a vocabulary going.

[Enkidoh]

The sepia was probably done specifically to nail down 'THIS IS THE PAST', so that nobody ever gets confused again. Probably overkill, but I don't blame them for the overcorrection, and it'd probably be more confusing to change it now, we've got a vocabulary going.

Personally though I doubt it was specificially to prevent confusion about where the Echo began and reality 'ended', as the confusion with 1.0's Echo was only really present at the beginning of the original game (during the original 1.0 starting city storyline), where the player's character was bouncing around in and out of other people's memories of ten years earlier uncontrollably and present day events were concurrently fusing with those that happened a decade before when the Archons first arrived in Eorzea. Once they joined the Path of the Twelve though and Minfilia instructed them to "use the power of the Echo", they got a handle on it and could use it "at will" (gameplay wise the game would actually prompt you to use the Echo as a choice when necessary, although this was somewhat of an illusion of choice as naturally to continue in the relevant quest you had to accept it), which meant that there was no longer any confusion about if you were in an Echo vision or not.

And as Professor Anonymoose said, even before that happened, the Echo was preceeded by a very subtle gong sound and woosh that was barely noticeable at the time, but reviewing old cutscenes of 1.0, it's amazing how obvious it is when you're actually aware of it and know what to listen for. Of course I could speculate what that gong/tolling bell really was, but I won't, given it's long been retconned out anyway and is now irrelevant.

Really, I believe that the reason why SE changed a vision through the Echo into a grainy, static-filled sepia-toned video recording was to overcome the unfortunate implications of being able to use a telepathic ability to view another's memories whenever you wish as being essentially violating that person mentally - mind rape in other words (further underlined by also retconning Minfilia in ARR into lamenting that Echo users cannot use the Echo whenever they wish, unlike her earlier instruction of the player's character in 1.0 in being able to do exactly that).

Not that I fault SE at all for feeling that way and changing it for ARR though of course (and I have to admit, the grainy old-fashioned VHS recording style of the Echo now is remarkably effective in a stylistic way if nothing else, but that just might be the 80's and 90's kid that I am talking.).

[Cleretic]

Not that I fault SE at all for feeling that way and changing it for ARR though of course (and I have to admit, the grainy old-fashioned VHS recording style of the Echo now is remarkably effective in a stylistic way if nothing else, but that just might be the 80's and 90's kid that I am talking.).

Yeah, I'll say that I actually like the visual effects for the Echo, although now that I'm recording a bunch of footage I do wish that it was maybe something that was only there for the intro/outro and then faded for the bulk of the scene, it can be kind of annoying when the color temperatures of the shots I'm going between change that wildly. I still like the effect, it especially seems to get across that this is pretty imprecise and maybe not reliable; it feels kinda like tuning into a TV station that you aren't getting great reception on.

And hell, Echo flashbacks being in sepia are a long way down from the main complaints I have when recording cutscenes. I'd kill for the ability to set weather and time of day, especially because I'm pretty sure the tech is in there for it; the game knows how to set the weather to everlasting light or the burning skies when you look at cutscenes during those parts of the story, they don't have to use the current time and weather. But implementing that would probably be a gift for exactly twelve people, and is pretty far beside the point.