Ecco 2 Prototype

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Level 4 Overview: (Placeholder?) Home Bay

  This is a level designed to be a prototype, or at least placeholder, Home Bay. Since the Celebration level (Level 5) is based on it [all that effort!] it seems that this level was meant to be kept for the final version, originally. It contains some oddities. You leave by jumping into the air from a cavern after following a dolphin to the exit, instead of using a teleport ring, there's a bunch of dolphins with no messages, some bubble-emitting shells that do nothing, and some bad English.  


 
This is where you start the level, and where you begin after loading the game (after the intro sequences run.) You're in what serves as a placeholder Home Bay, but it's nothing like the counterpart in the original Ecco or the final version. You're surrounded by fish on a coral background with all your health and air bars, which aren't present when starting the final version (as you still have your powers from the Asterite in the first game.)


Here are some dolphins playing at the surface of the water. None of them have any messages, so if you sing to them they'll just ignore you. Ingrates.


These plants on the bottom start spewing bubbles once Ecco nears them, and only when Ecco nears them. They emit so many bubbles they can create horrible lag. These existed in Ecco 1's Home Bay, but they weren't placed side by side, only emitted a few bubbles (not a stream of them), and the bubbles were of course smaller.


Over to the right is a small tunnel (a lot like the one in Level 3 or its final version counterpart, Two Tides. It leads down into a spacious lower cavern with some very interesting things.


At the bottom of this cavern, there's a shelled one that emits bubbles when sung to. They don't do anything though, except look cool. There are also a couple of turtles like this one swimming idly around.


There is also a dolphin down here with nothing to say. There's another dolphin below who DOES have something to say, but something else to note first ...


If you use your sonar here, none of the dolphins show up on the map! Not a single one! It's very erratic whether dolphins (or any other active entities) will appear on the map in this build.


However there's also an odd dolphin swimming back and forth in a straight line right at the bottom. When you sing to him, he says this. Not exactly gramatically correct. "I am sure that didn't make it into the [final] game. The dolphin speak was designed to sound different not bad like that... ;) " - ED Annunziata


Let's see where he wants us to go. He takes an excursion to the surface apparently to get air, seeing as he's been underwater swimming side to side since 1994. Then he starts swimming around at about 900 miles per hour as you try to follow him. He won't sing if he loses you like dolphins do in the final version, but he will return to his original location.


He leads us to the exit of the level. If you don't come with him, you can't get through this current. But once he's there, it's not as strong and you can push through.


This tunnel full of random fish leads up to a tiny surface area, enclosed by rock walls. After about a second and a half delay Ecco is launched to the bottom of the screen and sent to a 3D Stage. The final Home Bay also ends in a 3D stage, but you don't get to it this way.


 




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