One of the most anticipated Oculus exclusives, Lone Echo II, has been delayed from 2019 to Q1 2020.
Released in 2017, Ready at Dawn’s Oculus exclusive Lone Echo set an impressive bar for VR interaction, locomotion, and storytelling, and remains one of VR’s most critically and popularly acclaimed games.
Lone Echo II is set to be a direct continuation of the original game. Initially announced in 2018 and set for release sometime in 2019, Ready at Dawn today confirmed that the Lone Echo II release date has been pushed back to Q1 2020.
“Today we confirmed that Ready At Dawn is bringing Echo Arena to Quest. In consideration of that project, we decided to push Lone Echo II out to 2020 so that we can give all our attention to that title once [Echo Arena on Quest] is out. We’re taking the time we need to do these titles justice,” Ru Weerasuriya, Ready at Dawn’s CEO and Creative Director, tells Road to VR.
Beyond that, the launch of the Rift S may have played a role. The headset uses inside-out tracking which requires line-of-sight to the controllers in order to maintain tracking. Lone Echo’s unique zero-G locomotion scheme was originally conceived for the external camera tracking used on the original Rift and may run into occasional tracking issues when played with inside-out tracking.
As Echo Arena is headed to Quest (which uses inside-out tracking like Rift S), it sounds like Ready at Dawn is confident that the inside-out tracking won’t fundamentally compromise the gameplay. But for Lone Echo II, the studio may have wanted more time to tweak the game’s various interactions to make sure it’s a smooth experience throughout. Last month the studio briefly spoke to the inside-out tracking on Rift S, saying it is “working closely together with Oculus to bring the highest quality tracking to Echo VR on the Rift S.”
