Just popping in to cover three issues:
1. End of and Era trailer & the Luminous Engine
What you see in the trailer is pre-rendered CG created by our ridiculously talented Visual Works studio (who handle most of the pre-rendered goodness you see in all Square Enix games). The Luminous Engine, on the other hand, is a medium that will generate pre-rendered quality graphics, but in real time. So, instead of just watching Agni climb on the back of an elder dragon and fly over an endless shanty town, you can control Agni
yourself and crash her into a bridge...that will explode into a
bajillion pieces without any slowdown, while maintaining the realism we've come to expect from exploding shanty town bridges.
As Yoshida-san has said in the past, the Luminous Engine is geared towards high-end machines, and offline campaigns, which is why it isn't suited for an MMO. And that is why we had our dev team build a new engine that would be a better fit with ARR.
2. Echo wooshing (or is that 'whooshing'?)
Anonymoose has explained it as well as anyone could have. Thanks!
3. Who is the mysterious primal that scared the Garleans away?
It pains me to say, I'm not allowed to speak on this issue. That twinge you feel in your elbow? That's not Bursitis. That's
my pain traveling across the aether and directly into your joints.
What I
can say, is that there
is an answer, it's been planned since the beginning, and it will make sense...well, as much sense as Square Enix stories usually make.
(And we're not just stalling, trying to buy time to think up something cool...honest!)