Are there any MMO projects that you suspect only you remember and care about — but everyone else has forgotten? I feel that way about Into the Echo, an interesting indie MMORPG that was announced back in 2021.
This one caught my attention not just because the team was putting a lot of thought into a fully realized fantasy world but also because it was going to utilize time travel to switch between eras and showcase cause-and-effect.
Unfortunately, any chances that this game is still in active development are low. We haven’t heard anything from the studio since it launched a new version of the game’s website and interactive lore experience last fall. There was some pre-alpha testing, but nothing more than that.
So either the project’s gone seriously radio silent while a lot of work is continuing, or Into the Echo is effectively dead. Either way, I wanted to reflect on why I latched onto this game with the hope that one day MMOs might do time travel well.
The title of this project is linked to this interesting mechanic: “The premise of time travel in Into The Echo is based on the idea that all actions create ripples in the fabric of time. Most of these are small, but every so often, an action is so significant that it creates waves that reverberate throughout eternity. These reverberations are called echoes.”
The team said in a blog that players would discover “echoes” around the world that could be activated as portals to the past through a ritual. Over 20 “eras” spanning 10,000 years were mentioned as the history of this fictional world of Raava, and it was suggested that players could jump back to most of them to accomplish missions and change things for the better.
Although the odds looking high that Into the Echo isn’t going to happen, there’s always the possibility that a future MMORPG might take a swing at this concept. We’ve never had a full-blooded time travel MMO before, and it’s an idea that’s rich with possibilities.
Perhaps I’m influenced by my all-time favorite JRPG, Chrono Trigger, and the fun and amazing ways that the designers took us on a time travel journey through a small world in various eras to set wrongs to right, figure out a mystery, and stop a growing evil force over the centuries.
And it’s not like MMOs have never touched the subject. The Secret World had a few quests that sent players jogging back in time — once through a haunted house! — and World of Warcraft is almost ridiculously loaded with time travel quests and time travel dragons and time travel dungeons. RIFT’s Defiant faction actually starts at the end of the world’s apocalypse and shoves players back in time via technology to prevent it from happening.
Time travel is a great way to explore the history of your game world and (to be practical) reuse landscape zones by showing what they used to be like 100, 500, 1000 years in the past or future. There are endless possibilities for stories involving ancestors, hidden secrets, uncovered mysteries, and especially changing the time stream to improve the outcome.
Now how this would play out in a massively multiplayer setting would be a mighty design challenge, but it’s not like there aren’t options involving layers, instancing, and a shared world that looks different for you than me despite us both walking through it.
Time travel would also allow players to reshape the actual landscape. Imagine the right forest planted a thousand years ago or a small creek rerouted. What if you built a house in an ancient era, only to revisit it many hundreds of years later to find the traces of a ruin in the same spot?
There seems to be so many creative possibilities for both players and developers — if a studio can even commit and bring to fruition such an MMO. Maybe it’ll never happen. But only time will tell!
Do you love spectating and speculating about upcoming MMOs? We do too! Every week, Justin tackles another upcoming title on the MMO Hype Train with opinions, analysis, and blind fervent hope. Choo choo all aboard!
