Overview

Developer: Buka Entertainment
Publisher: Bethesda Softworks
Echelon official page: http://echelon.bethsoft.com//

The forgotten shooter

It's so rare to get a good shooter these days. The days when everyone wanted to make a Wing Commander clone are long gone, and the focus has shifted from futuristic flight combat games to first person shooters. FreeSpace 2 was the last great space shmup out there, and while Starlancer filled the void for a while, it wasn't in the same league.

Developer Buka Entertainment and publisher Bethesda are trying to step in, and are throwing in a few new ideas at the same time with Echelon. Echelon isn't a space sim, it takes place on a habitable world and has all the typical features thereof, with bodies of water, large expanses of land (flat, canyons, mountains, hills) and an atmosphere. Since you are fighting in an atmosphere, some of the craft used for it are suitably different from those used in space. A typical example are fighters, which can be best described as a hybrid helicopter and jet fighter. They move around through the use of thrusters, and those same thrusters give them the ability to hover. They are not very aerodynamic, so their top speed is rather limited. There are also the fighter-derived bombers, basically a slower and heavier-armed version of the fighter. Finally, there are interceptors which are akin to modern-day jet aircraft - fast but not as agile as fighters, and incapable of hovering in place.

Your first briefing

No toys for you!

But why would anyone in the future bother with these machines, and not simply go from world to world in giant spaceships, ready to blow anyone who doesn't surrender to dust? Alas, that was tried at one time with disastrous consequences. Over a century before the game starts, the Empire was involved in a civil war, and as the war progressed, the Empire was becoming increasingly brutal - finally resorting to destroying entire worlds. Soon enough, the number of habitable worlds was getting precipitously low, so tactics were changed to involve conventional weapons, in the hopes of preserving space for mankind to live. Well, at least they did us the courtesy of trying to explain it away.

That's a heck of a first sight

The water is quite stunning

What next?

The Empire eventually fell, though it managed to send out colonists into deep space, to preserve its legacy. The worlds rebuilt and a central government was re-established in the form of the Federation. Within a few decades, contact was made with the Velians - the descendents of the Imperial colonists, who had evolved into cyborgs. The Velians offered the Federation an advanced gate/jump-point technology that greatly simplified and eased inter-system travel. Unfortunately for the Federation, those same Zero-Transport Gates were used as Trojan horses by the Velians, letting them strike at all parts of the Federation at once.

You are part of the organized resistance that sprung up after the initital shock of the sneak attack wore off. The plot from hereon in is not particularly brilliant, but holds its own and the writing for mission briefings and debriefings is believable and even manages to be witty at the same time.