Lone Echo 1 and 2 review: grandoise space adventures

I’m a big fan of both Lone Echo games. They’re well crafted and grandiose space adventures, with engaging mechanics and satisfying narratives that scale up, up and away—to the edges of the cosmos. In both titles we embody a robot named Jack, who, situated on a space station orbiting Saturn, assists the astronaut Captain Olivia Rhodes (voiced by Alice Coulthard). Sometimes we perform simple task-based objectives—replacing a battery, pulling a lever, activating a screen, etcetera—and sometimes we have more ambitious things in mind: investigating the awesome implications of mysterious biomass, for instance, and even travelling through time. 

Rather than reviewing them individually, I’ve grouped this impressive pair of titles (released in 2017 and 2021 respectively) together and made general observations about both. Central to them is an innovative navigation system predicated on two equally important considerations. One: that we inhabit the body of a robot. And two: that we exist in zero-gravity environments. We propel around by activating thrusters and use our hands to hold, reach, climb, and push off surfaces. It’s a graceful form of locomotion that feels great, and reflects careful consideration of navigation as a function of embodied experience. These aren’t productions that merely import the pre-existing language of first-person video games and let ’em rip in VR.

The original is set in 2126 and begins on the aforementioned station, which is damaged by a mysterious event (cue enigmatic music). Jack and Rhodes go to work repairing the place and investigating the cause of the damage. The second picks up where the first ends, with Jack and Olivia discovering themselves hundreds of years into the future. Both narratives are long, windy, and stretched out with events that can’t be rushed. If you’re after a slam-bang experience, tight and oomphy, hurtling through eye popping environments, these experiences aren’t for you. There’s a menial element to many of the duties we must undertake. 

Performing these duties does solicit certain rewards: a tram ride in the second game, for instance, feels particularly earned, given the considerable effort required to make this vehicle operational. When I rode on it, I felt like saying: “I fixed this thing with my own damn hands!” The pacing however is unquestionably slow. One review of Lone Echo 2 went so far as to describe it as “glacial”—which is not necessarily incorrect, but also not necessarily a criticism. Applied to a film or TV show, an adjective like that would be damning; in this context, it describes a sense of narrative time that’s intentionally close to the rhythms of daily life. 

Film and television productions can be sped up by increasing the frequency of cuts, which are often used for the purpose of condensing time. A novel can also jump around easily: one paragraph, or sentence, can be in a different time and place to the one preceding it. VR productions like Lone Echo—which aspire to create a simulated reality or parallel universe—are a different kettle of fish. They can jump around, but embellishments such as cuts have an intensely dislocating effect, like breaks or fissures in the space-time continuum. They plunge us out of the imaginary world and remind us that we’re inside a mediated experience. Spatio-temporal consistency is paramount.

For developers, the challenge is to balance lifelike rhythms with interesting gameplay and story elements, so that we remain engaged in a virtual world that keeps turning at a consistent pace. Overall, the Lone Echo games achieve this well. One upside of their chunky (but rarely boring) slow spots is a greater appreciation one draws from the larger scale set pieces and narrative turning points. Underpinning everything is the dynamic between Jack and Rhodes, which feels utterly genuine, perhaps surprisingly so—given only one of them is human. They’re a good team, and they care for each other. In fact this partnership is one of the most memorable to date between a player and an NPC, of any VR production.

Embodying Jack made me contemplate aspects of heroism. We feel like the white knight, the saviour, the hero of the day. And in many respects we are; we certainly work hard for old mate Olivia and her humans brethren. But if this story were recounted in history Rhodes—not us—would presumably be assigned “hero” status. Which isn’t fair, right? After expending so much effort, performing all those menial duties, doing all the dirty work, being such a damn good assistant, we should get our accolades, our dues…right? These games not only made me care about robots; they made me defensive.