The road to The Gallery: Episode 2 – Heart of the Emberstone is paved with slow teases, partial reveals, and gradually more interesting morsels of information. A few weeks ago we got our first sneak peek at the strange new world players will find themselves in, along with a creepy alien creature. Today, we’re going behind the scenes of an actual recording session with the team at Cloudhead Games.
As one of the first VR games to release with a true narrative, voice acting, and detailed motion capture early last year when it launched with the release of the HTC Vive, The Gallery: Episode 1 – The Call of the Starseed [Review: 9/10] felt like a true step forward for interactive adventure games. Now, that technology is being taken even further.
In today’s behind-the-scenes dev diary, we’re shown what it’s like to partake in a recording session for the upcoming second installment of the narrative adventure series, featuring BAFTA-nominated actor Adrian Hough (Assassin’s Creed III and X-Men: The Last Stand). Motion capture and voice over recording for games has evolved over the years to require a full range of talents from performers on par with Hollywood movie and television productions.
Since The Gallery: Episode 2 – Heart of the Emberstone actually does its motion capture and voice over recording at the same time — similar to the likes of Naughty Dog — they’ve created an in-headset teleprompter system for talent to see lines if needed. Checking a sheet in your hand isn’t as easy when your vision is restricted inside of an HMD. However, one thing VR does let creators do is put their actors into the environments themselves, instead of asking them to imagine things while standing in a green screen studio.
Things can get especially complicated in though VR because the designers have less control over where the player is located during a scene and where they are physically looking in the environment. Designing interactions with those hindrances in mind presents immense challenges.
UploadVR will be one of the first outlets to go hands-on with The Gallery: Episode 2 – Heart of the Emberstone at GDC in a few weeks and we’ll deliver our detailed thoughts about the experience from the show floor. There’s still no release date set and we haven’t seen more than a few choice glimpses of actual footage for the next installment, but things are shaping up nicely for what is poised to be one of VR’s most anticipated upcoming releases.
The next video in the coming weeks is teased as the “Story and Gameplay” reveal — stay tuned!
