Ready at Dawn’s Lone Echo 2 took home both VR-focused awards at yesterday’s 25th Annual D.I.C.E. Awards.
The sci-fi epic won both in Technical Achievement and overall Game of the Year in the two ‘Immersive Reality’ categories. For Game of the Year, Lone Echo 2 beat rivals including Demeo (which was awarded UploadVR’s own Game of the Year award), I Expect You To Die 2, Resident Evil 4 VR and Song in the Smoke. That’s a tough category for sure.
Lone Echo 2 Wins Big At DICE Awards
“Really the degree to which the original Lone Echo resonated with players as a world and characters and story that was so immersive and deeply personal was really humbling us as a team,” Game Director Nathan Phail-Liff said in an acceptance message. “And continuing that was, frankly, a nerve wracking endeavor.”
We thought Lone Echo 2 was a good follow-up to the original that featured the same stunning levels of immersion thanks to the incredible zero gravity locomotion and high-end visuals. Ultimately, though, we argued that it moved at too slow a pace for its own good and could have streamlined some of its lengthy narrative-driven segments, though it was definitely still worth playing for anyone with a PC good enough to actually run it.
Lone Echo 2 was, however, the last full Oculus Rift exclusive we’re likely to ever see, so it’s nice to see the headset at least go out on a high note with awards such as these. We’re eagerly waiting to see what the now Meta-owned Ready at Dawn does next.
It’s nearly time for Keighley – The Game Awards returns on December 9 and nominations have just been revealed, including for Best VR/AR titles.
Well, it’s not really the best AR titles because there aren’t any listed, but you get the point. There are five nominees this year, including the PSVR-exclusive support for Hitman 3, Oculus Rift exclusive swansong Lone Echo 2, the recent port of Resident Evil 4 VR and then Schell Games’ excellent I Expect You To Die 2 alongside the equally-enjoyable Sniper Elite VR.
It’s not a bad list of titles and we’re definitely relieved not to see Beat Saber somehow sneaking its way into the nominations for another year. We gave each of these titles UploadVR’s coveted ‘Great’ label save for Lone Echo 2, which we enjoyed but ultimately thought was too slow-paced and gave a ‘Good’.
As with any awards show, there are some omissions we can’t help but bring up. Demeo is the only new VR game to earn an ‘Essential’ label from us in 2021 so it’s a shame not to see it listed here, and the recent launch of 17-Bit’s Song In The Smoke feels like it deserves a mention, too. But these things are subjective and, even though we’re right, we’ll allow others to speak their opinions.
Still, this isn’t the only show to recognize VR achievements coming up soon. AIXR’s own VR Awards returns on November 18, too. Expect to see more VR awards prop up as we move into the new year, too.
Lone Echo 2 is a suitably lavish swansong for the Oculus Rift, but it’s a familiar and glacially-paced adventure. Read on for our Lone Echo 2 review.
Get a good look at Lone Echo 2 while you can. Drink in the sweeping vistas, finely-detailed space junk and frankly unmatched character animations because, let’s face it, VR probably isn’t going to look this good again for some time. Ready At Dawn’s long-delayed sequel has the unenviable task of being Facebook’s last Oculus Rift exclusive; one final high-budget, ludicrously-produced bash to make even the newest of GPUs groan. The game itself is unconcerned with that burden, instead stubbornly fixated on its slow-going roots in a deeply respectable but glacially-paced follow-up.
We’re back with Jack and Liv, the android and human odd-couple that, at the end of the first game, found themselves at the other end of time after a supernatural event catapulted a disease-ridden ship into their own era. The pair must find a way home whilst also combating the infestation, known as the Biomass.
Fans of the first Lone Echo will remember it for its deep focus on narrative and character connection, and that’s still very much the case here. I’d argue that, to this day, we haven’t seen a more convincing VR companion than Liv, a sullen-but-fair Captain that’s immaculately realized both through believably empathetic dialogue perfectly delivered by Alice Coulthard and RAD’s own penchant for impeccable facial animations and performance capture. Her relationship with robotic protagonist, Jack (who, oddly, is voiced by Troy Baker literally doing the robot), is a rare thing. It’s built on a deep admiration and fondness for each other but leaving the player to ponder the iffy ethics of human/android relations themselves.
Lone Echo 2 Review – The Facts
What is it?: A sequel to 2017’s sci-fi VR blockbuster in which you throw yourself through zero-gravity environments in a narrative-driven campaign.. Platforms: Oculus Rift Release Date: Out now Price: $39.99
It’s this relationship — and others that will brew throughout — that ends up carrying the sequel’s plot. The quest for a potential cure for the Biomass is certainly filled with twists and turns, including moments of nail-biting tension, but it’s also one of hefty, hefty conversation. There is a lot of waiting around and listening to other characters talk in Lone Echo 2, even more so than the first game given that this is a longer sequel stretching out to a 7+ hour adventure. The small dialogue choices return and there are sometimes microinteractions to keep you busy but, even though the game remains powerfully immersive throughout, your own patience might not last the trip.
That’s not to say the story itself is boring, it’s just extrapolated to an unnecessary degree. Characters sluggishly reach conclusions that you’ve come to minutes before they’ve finished a monologue, or deliver objectives to pull switches or scan items long after you’ve already completed them. In one late-game sequence, an AI extensively explains how to use a hand-mounted gun while you’re chained to a wall and you’re not let free until you’ve completed a lot of target practice. Anyone that’s played a VR game before will likely have learned how to use it in mere seconds. Every tiny action or minor development comes with a similarly lengthy explanation. The game essentially refuses to move at your pace and, whenever you’re accompanied by another companion, you know you’ll be moving at half the rate you would otherwise.
It’s not until you’re finally given some alone time — a good few hours into the game — that Lone Echo 2 finally starts to return to some of the interesting puzzle-platforming it explored in the first game. The zero-gravity movement is still wonderfully fluid, allowing you to hurl yourself from one end of the room to another with lucid-like simplicity. Challenges pick up where the first game left off; the bulbous Biomass presents a lot of navigational trials but the game quickly sets about establishing a few new threats. Ticks, for example, are a mobile form of the infection that you’ll first need to distract with another power source — say moveable cranes or door locks — before passing by, and one section with net-like Webs requires you to target specific mounds of Biomass to unblock passages.
Smaller side missions are also back though there are precious few of them, and many of the tasks at hand resemble the busy work and fetch quests you’ll have gotten used to in the first game. In other words, gameplay in Lone Echo 2 is very much in service to the story at all times, and there are only a handful of moments in which it really feels like a game more than it does a kind of interactive movie.
Appreciated as these new challenges are, there’s little to Lone Echo 2’s gameplay that’s drastically different from the first. New powers like telekinesis and, eventually a wrist-mounted firearm (borrowed from the excellent Echo Combat expansion to the multiplayer Echo VR) are similarly welcome but really don’t evolve too far beyond what’s come before. Both thematically and in execution this is a little bit too much of the same, and the sequel doesn’t benefit from the same sense of revelatory exploration that made the first such a landmark achievement. When I finished the first game in 2017 I said I felt like I was witnessing the end of the first act rather than a full game and both Lone Echo 2’s story and gameplay features definitely feel like expansions to the original more than the next big step.
If there’s one element of that game that does push the boundaries, however, it’s the sheer graphical ambition. Lone Echo 2 is, without a doubt, the best-looking VR game you’ll play this year. Not only are the character models some of the most strikingly authentic you can find in gaming but areas of the game are huge in scope with stunning complexity to them. The Biomass itself is a thing to behold, flooding through corridors and floors. But it’s not until later in the game that you realize each and every bulb in the sprawling sea of infection is its own unique property, and not just an asset mesh. That counts right down to the tiniest of spheres on a control panel; it’s ridiculously impressive to take in.
Lone Echo 2 Review – Comfort
Lone Echo 2 is pretty unique in the comfort zone given that its movement is different to most VR games. Throwing yourself through environments feels natural and, as such, you’ll hopefully find it to be a very comfortable experience even if it’s technically smooth locomotion. You could always try the free Echo VR multiplayer to see if you can stomach the experience, plus there are incremental artificial turn options too.
Amongst this eye-opening display of technical proficiency hides a rawer beauty. When you die in the game, you reboot at a Fabricator machine and the husk of your old shell is still visible. In one scene I respawned just in time to see my old self float past in a fetal position before being lost to the vastness of space. It was a stunning moment of quiet awe that I won’t soon forget, and you’ll more than likely discover many of these moments for yourself.
But you will, of course, need a very decent rig to make it run and there are some technical hiccups. My RTX 3060 could just about handle the game on high graphics settings but even then, running the game off of an SSD with 32GB RAM, there was some pretty aggressive pop-in in some of the game’s larger areas and even some of the smaller sections had blurred textures. Combined with the cut to loads between areas, the overall package doesn’t feel quite as polished as you might expect in certain segments. It’s also worth nothing that, if you’re playing with an Oculus Quest via Link or AirLink, the camera placement on that device can cause some hiccups in tracking when facing away from your hands.
Lone Echo 2 Review – Final Impressions
Lone Echo 2’s incredible production values and first-rate immersion make for an enjoyable swansong that’s let down by its plodding pace and familiarity. Despite arriving four years after the groundbreaking original, there’s very little that will surprise you here and, although well written, the drawn-out character dialogue quickly wears thin. It’s still held up by a fantastic locomotion system with first-rate immersion alongside a solid story with believable performances, but the startling spark of blockbuster innovation that fuelled the first game has long-since died out. Jack and Liv’s mission to get back to the past makes for a fun ride, but parts of Lone Echo 2 were stuck there to begin with.
For more on how we arrived at this rating, read our review guidelines. What did you make of our Lone Echo 2 review? Let us know in the comments below!
After a nearly two-year delay, Lone Echo II is finally here to bring us full circle on Jack & Liv’s story. Was it worth the wait? Read on to find out.
Lone Echo II Details:
Available On: Oculus PC Release Date: October 12th, 2021 Price: $40 Developer: Ready at Dawn Publisher: Oculus Studios Reviewed On: Quest 2 (Oculus Link)
Gameplay
Let’s get this out of the way right up front: Lone Echo II picks up almost immediately after the original game, and has a plot that’s heavily reliant on prior knowledge. If you have any interest in playing Lone Echo II, you should really play Lone Echo first.
Now that that’s clear… Lone Echo II returns players to familiar gameplay and game structure. While on its surface one might think to classify the game as an action-adventure or adventure-puzzler, it’s actually closer to an adventure-exploration game, as it never manages to deliver much tension, action, nor puzzle intrigue.
Lone Echo II is a very slowly paced game, sometimes to a fault. While it’s nice that we get to meet some new characters this time around, this leads to extended dialogue sequences where you’re just kind of sitting around listening to people have slow conversations. Had there been more intrigue in the plot or growth of the characters, this might have been just fine, but in the absence of those things it can be a bit tiresome.
The game returns quickly to the gameplay established by its predecessor—which involves running around causally completing various objectives—and manages to deliver a similar (and sometimes magical) feeling of actually floating in and around a space station orbiting Saturn.
Just like the first game, eventually you’ll be let loose outside of a space station to explore and search out some optional quests or pursue the main objectives. This time around the area you can explore feels even more expansive, and the optional quests have a bit more pay-off as they can bring you some upgrades to your suit’s systems (though these don’t feel essential in any way to completing the main plot).
Without spoiling anything, you’ll look through various perspectives throughout the game, thanks to the hardware-agnostic nature of Jack’s android memory. Initially the game looks like it’s using this opportunity to offer more action (eventually you actually wield a real weapon), but unfortunately it winds up functioning much more like a tool than anything else, offering up little that could be called “combat.”
In Lone Echo II the environment continues to be your biggest threat and the source of the game’s conflict. There’s a single new enemy you’ll run into—the floating “tick” biomass forms which are basketball-sized creatures that will attach to you and drain your health if you get to close—but while they’re fun to watch as they float around and squish against walls, they don’t amount to particularly interesting enemies. This is mainly because they aren’t intelligent (to be fair, they aren’t supposed to be), which renders them more like dynamic environmental threats than anything truly challenging.
And that brings me to a bit of a gripe with Lone Echo II: there isn’t much of a gameplay arc. While many games teach players new skills and then puts those skills to the test through challenging situations, Lone Echo II just never asks that much of you, and subsequently doesn’t ever manage to raise the level of tension. There’s rarely any consequence for dying, the puzzles are never challenging enough to give you a “eureka!” moment, and the game’s single enemy feels more like a nuisance than a threat.
For the most part you’re leisurely going about your business in space, which can admittedly be fun thanks to a strong sense of immersion, but we already got a good dose of that in the first Lone Echo; the sequel was the prime opportunity to evolve that gameplay into something more, not just more of the same.
Lone Echo II could have been forgiven for its leisurely pace if it had a great story and characters to lean into, but those aspects feel only so-so. Though the characters are beautifully rendered and well voice-acted, the plot—like the gameplay—has a fairly flat arc that ends with an anti-climactic and slightly puzzling ending. The choice to hide a key scene behind the credits also seems odd, as I’m sure some players will take the headset off before seeing the full ending.
All in all, Lone Echo II took me about nine hours to complete, though it would have probably taken me a few more had I opted to track down all of the optional quests. Of those optional quests that I did do, I found them generally enjoyable and felt like they added to the game’s sense of freedom and discovery. Once you get out into open space it feels like there’s always something new to look at or explore.
Immersion
Immersion is truly where Lone Echo II shines. While the gameplay and story arcs might not provide a strong sense of momentum, the game—more than almost any other—makes you feel like you’re really out there, floating around in that world.
At least in the free-roaming parts of the game, the feeling of being able to simply fly to any part of the map to explore whatever interests you at the moment brings a sense of freedom that few VR games manage to achieve. Yes, it sometimes feels like you’re doing chores, but hey, if you could fold your laundry while feeling like you’re on a space station orbiting Saturn, wouldn’t you jump at the opportunity?
The sense of immersion is aided heavily by the game’s rich interactions and immersive locomotion. It’s the same zero-G movement as the first game, where you can grab onto the environment and push off of it to send yourself hurtling from one place to another. Assisted by micro-thrusters on your wrists for fine-adjustments and a bigger booster on your back for building up speed, the feeling of reaching out and grabbing the environment so frequently—or, in cases of the biomass threat, carefully not touching the environment—really makes the walls, handles, and levers feel solid around you.
There’s also still something magical about seeing objects float around the zero-G environment, especially when just about every single one is physically interactive. Sometimes its fun just to grab a floating piece of debris on your way by, give it a little shove, and watch it cruise silently into the void of space. And more practically speaking, being able to reorient objects in your hand by giving them a little twist, letting them spin in place, then grabbing them again, feels entirely natural.
Lone Echo II is beautifully art directed. It feels like there’s almost no deviation in style or graphical detail from the first game which, on one hand, is great because the first was extremely detailed, but on the other hand, it would have been nice to see some new graphical flourishes given the four years that have elapsed from the original.
Even without improved graphics, it would have been great to see more significant optimizations to the game so that most everyone could enjoy it at its best presentation.
Oculus recommends a GeForce GTX 1080 GPU and an Intel i7-6000 CPU, or higher. Unfortunately the game struggled a bit at times on an RTX 2080 Ti and an i7-6700K at Medium settings and 2x MSAA. Worth noting: I was playing the game on Quest 2 via Oculus Link, which means it was rendering at much higher resolution than if I had been using Rift S, plus Oculus Link uses some extra resources to work.
Do yourself a favor when starting Lone Echo II: disable Temporal AA, then find the highest setting that will still run the game at 4x or 2x MSAA. The game unfortunately suffers a lot from aliasing, but the Temporal AA solution adds a significant blur. Using 4x or 2x MSAA will show more jaggies but everything will be much sharper.
Lone Echo II also seems to expect SSD speeds, as I saw fairly regular popping of some large textures during my HDD-installed playthrough. Luckily its very reasonable 21GB size should be easy enough for most people to find room for on their fastest drives, even if only until they’ve completed the game.
Comfort
I found Lone Echo II’s zero-G hands-on locomotion to be fairly comfortable, though if I played for more than an hour or so I could start to feel some faint discomfort which would prompt me to take a break.
Even though it’s fairly comfortable and intuitive, Lone Echo II only supports smooth locomotion and has minimal adjustments for comfort. Snap turn or smooth turn are really the only choice you can make—there’s no blinders or other forms of comfort compensation, so it’s up to you to be careful about how you move if you want to stay comfortable.
You can easily make the game more or less comfortable depending upon how careful you are with your movement; avoid shaking yourself around violently or flying face-first into walls and you’ll be much better off. You can find a full list of the game’s comfort settings further below.
While there was some risk that Quest 2’s inside-out tracking would prove problematic with Lone Echo II‘s hands-on locomotion—due to the controllers sometimes getting lost out of sight—found this to be extremely rare during my time with the game. I think that’s because it’s fairly rare to grab anything behind you, which leaves your hands generally visible by the headset’s cameras.
The only issue I found with the controllers was that pressing the button on the side of my helmet to turn on my light was a hit-or-miss affair which usually took a few tries.
‘Lone Echo II’ Comfort Settings – October 12th, 2021
Lone Echo II has been in the works for quite some time now, and will release as the last Oculus Rift exclusive game. Facebook recently stopped selling the Rift PC VR headset and has since doubled down on its commitment to its standalone Oculus Quest platform. The Quest platform has increasingly become Facebook’s platform for exclusives, such as Jurassic World Aftermath and The Climb 2. Even big titles that originally launched as PC VR exclusives, such as Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond, are now also making their way over to Quest 2.
It’s been more than four years since the release of the lauded Lone Echo, but its sequel is finally just around the corner. Ahead of Lone Echo II’s release date on October 12th, Facebook’s VR studio Ready at Dawn has revealed a launch trailer teasing some of the action players can expect from the game.
Lone Echo II is set to pick up essentially right where the original game left off, with the player (the android ‘Jack’) and compatriot Liv still unraveling exactly where they’ve ended up and what to do next.
In the trailer we see the familiar zero-G locomotion that was so core to the first game, as well as the return of the ‘biomass’ which posed an environmental threat. Not too much else about what’s happening is spoiled (thank you), but there’s also the more advanced and seemingly sentient form of biomass which we saw in our preview of Lone Echo II way back in 2019.
Since our preview, however, Lone Echo II has been delayed multiple times, from an initial release date expected in 2019 all the way to October 2021, with its developer having also been acquired by Facebook in 2020. It remains to be seen how much, or how little, the game has changed due to the delays and restructuring of its developer; after all this time we sure hope it’s worth the wait.
Lone Echo II is set for a release date on October 12th on Oculus PC, priced at $40. The original Lone Echo remains discounted to $10 on the lead up to the sequel’s launch.
Lone Echo II releases on Oculus Rift on October 12. Facebook and Ready At Dawn say that’s final this time.
The release date has been a long time coming. The sequel to the original Lone Echo was first announced in 2018 and, though we saw the game in 2019, Ready at Dawn fell silent for much of 2020. An August 2021 release date was then confirmed earlier this year but the game was delayed once again right at the last minute. A blog update today confirms the sequel launches next month. Check out the trailer for the game below.
Lone Echo II Gets A Final Release Date
All the same, we’re looking forward to getting back to the narrative-driven adventure, which follows an android named Jack and Captain Olivia Rhodes who find themselves at the other end of time and space after the first game’s events. Gameplay sees players throwing themselves through zero-gravity environments, avoiding hazards and solving puzzles. We thought the first game set the bar for Rift exclusives.
Lone Echo II also looks to be the last Oculus Rift exclusive game, as Facebook has stopped selling the PC VR headset to double down on Quest. The game also isn’t coming to SteamVR despite the fact that the last Rift exclusive before it, Medal of Honor, launched there too.
This will be the first of two Facebook-funded titles releasing in October. Yesterday the company also confirmed that Quest 2 exclusive, Resident Evil 4 VR, launches on October 21. Are you going to be picking either game up? Let us know in the comments below.
Lone Echo II, Ready at Dawn’s long-awaited sequel to the sci-fi adventure Oculus PC exclusive, was supposed to make its grand entrance back in August, but was delayed at the last minute to “later this year.” Now the studio says it’s officially set for launch on October 12th.
Update (September 28th, 2021): Ready at Dawn today announced in a blog post that Lone Echo II is set to launch on Oculus PC on October 12th. This includes Oculus Rift and Quest via Link or Air Link.
The original article announcing the game’s last delay follows below.
Original Article (August 13th, 2021): The studio released a message on Thursday stating that Lone Echo II is being delayed from its August 24th launch date to “later this year.” Here’s the full message from Ready at Dawn below:
To Our Lone Echo Community,
It was heartwarming to see the outpouring of love and excitement last month when we announced the Lone Echo II launch date. Like many game studios over the past couple of years, our team has tackled new obstacles in development, and has needed to be inventive and resourceful to reach this point. We have been working hard to deliver the very best experience possible and we are eager to have you join Liv and Jack in their adventures once again. However, as we get closer to launch day, it has become clear that we needed a bit more time to polish and reach our desired quality level. As such, Lone Echo II’s launch date will be moved to later this year.
The decision to delay a game is always a tough one, but we believe you all deserve to experience the very best we can deliver.
We thank you for your patience and understanding.
Be safe, and see you around the rings of Saturn…
-The Ready At Dawn Team
Lone Echo II has been delayed now a number of times since it was originally announced to arrive in 2019. Like the first in the series, the space-faring adventure is set to be a graphically intense game targeting Oculus PC headsets (Oculus Rift and Quest via Link or Air Link). It’s also set to be the last PC-only title funded by Facebook, both through direct funding and by now actually owning the studio that produces it.
Since we’ll be waiting until another release date materializes, the original Lone Echo (2017) is currently on sale for $10. It was Road to VR’s 2017 Rift Game of the Year, and still holds up as a class-leading PC VR game in terms of polish and immersion
Now two years old, Ready at Dawn’s 15-minute gameplay video still gives us the best look of a new mystery and a few puzzling challenges you’ll face in your story-based jaunt through space as Jack, android companion to the human Captain Liv.
Less than a month after announcing the Lone Echo II release date Facebook’s Ready At Dawn opted to move it back to later this year, with no solid date attached.
The sequel to 2017’s powerhouse single-player PC VR title was originally to release on August 24th — the date was announced just a few weeks ago on on July 20th.
It was heartwarming to see the outpouring of love and excitement last month when we announced the Lone Echo II launch date. Like many game studios over the past couple of years, our team has tackled new obstacles in development, and has needed to be inventive and resourceful to reach this point. We have been working hard to deliver the very best experience possible and we are eager to have you join Liv and Jack in their adventures once again. However, as we get closer to launch day, it has become clear that we needed a bit more time to polish and reach our desired quality level. As such, Lone Echo II’s launch date will be moved to later this year.
The decision to delay a game is always a tough one, but we believe you all deserve to experience the very best we can deliver.
The long-awaited sequel to Ready At Dawn’s space adventure Lone Echo (2017) is nearly here. Lone Echo II is now set to arrive on August 24th, likely making it one of the last PC-only games funded by Facebook to arrive on the Oculus Store.
Lone Echo II has been delayed multiple times since it was originally slated to arrive in 2019, but the wait is almost over. The game, which launches on the Oculus Store for Rift and Quest via either Link or Air Link next month, will be priced at $40.
In a bid to get more people interested in the now four year-old game, the original Lone Echois getting a steep cut from its regular price of $40, bringing the game to just $10 for a limited time.
Lone Echo follows the exploits of Captain Olivia Rhodes and an artificial intelligence named Jack (that’s you) who look after an advanced mining facility around the rings of Saturn. As Jack, you use futuristic tools, solve puzzles, and fly around still one of the most detailed and immersive VR games to hit the Oculus platform.
Image courtesy Ready at Dawn, Facebook
Since you’re a consciousness backed up on local servers, getting killed isn’t nearly the same corporeal drama as it might be for your companion Captain Rhodes. You simply wake back up in a new artificial body and continue with the narrative adventure.
No spoilers here, but in Lone Echo II you reprise the role of Jack as you embark on new adventures with Captain Rhodes. Although it’s possible things have changed over the past two years, a 15-minute gameplay video gives us the best look of a new mystery and a few puzzling challenges Jack must overcome.
Ready at Dawn, which has since been acquired by Facebook, says that anyone who purchases Lone Echo II will also receive a free chassis for their Echo VR avatar, which matches Jack’s new chassis (seen above). Echo VR is the studio’s sportier cross-platform little brother, which is kind of like a zero-gravity version of ultimate frisbee.
