VR as a medium is rather new, but that hasn't stopped hit games like Blood & Truth emerging, which actually became the first VR game to top the UK charts. At Gamelab in Barcelona we spoke with Stuart Whyte of Sony's London Studio to hear more about the comfort options in the game, including the brevity of the experience.
"VR is so intense, it's so immersive that we can find, even with our game which is mostly about seated play - although you can play it standing up - you get physical fatigue after a while because you're moving around a lot, so we tried to design our levels to be around 30 minutes maximum, to give the opportunity for breaks there," he explained. "But yeah, it's a five- to six-hour experience, which is I guess short compared to some of the bigger games on console, but it's actually super long for a movie, right? And I think for us we wanted to have a story and a plot that was easy to follow, and something that really pulled you through the experience."
Looking ahead, we can expect London Studio to continue working with VR, and Whyte explains that they're going to further experiment and innovate:
"We loved what we did on PlayStation VR Worlds, and with VR Worlds we tried a lot of different experiences, but London Heist was by far the most popular when we looked at the data as to what people played what, so I think definitely we've learned a lot from Blood & Truth and I think we're gonna continue trying to... continue to really learn the medium of VR, really try and push it in new and exciting ways, because it's so new and so fresh. There's so many people out there that still haven't tried VR and I think when you see a YouTube video of a VR game, it's not really getting across half the story of the experience that you get when you're actually in a headset. It is like you are teleported into a game world, and that is something magical that I think we're definitely gonna continue to invest in."
Have you tried Blood & Truth?