I don’t know about you, but I’d love to see Until Dawn‘s branching horror gameplay and character interactions brought to VR.
In fact, I think a lot of people would. Last year’s sleeper hit from Supermassive Games surprised just about everyone with its charming B-movie appeal and choice-based narrative. It’s something we haven’t yet seen adapted into the VR scene but, from the sound of things, it could be Supermassive itself that takes that task on.
That’s what executive producer Simon Harris told me when we spoke about the team’s upcoming PlayStation VR spin-off, Until Dawn: Rush of Blood, earlier this month. The rollercoaster shooter is a radical departure from the original branching adventure, but Harris teased that it’s also looking at bringing what it achieved in the original game over into VR to deliver what he describes as “in many ways the next level of interaction.”
Harris told me that the team is “definitely looking at” how it brings Until Dawn‘s character-based gameplay to VR and that it wants to “reach the same bar” that it set last year. He explained that the developer is trying to tackle speech in first-person gameplay and whether or not to give the player character a voice in that kind of scenario. He cited Half-Life‘s Gordon Freeman as a classic example of why such characters don’t usually talk, but stated that “You couldn’t do that in Until Dawn through a VR experience.”
“So there are lots of other problems we need to solve but we’re definitely looking at and working out ways that we can bring that level of storytelling to VR,” Harris said.
It sounds like we could see a first-person VR experience that follows the Until Dawn formula come out of Supermassive Games in the future. Like Harris says, though, this brings about a lot of challenges in making character interaction convincing. Until Dawn itself is quite the resume, so the studio might just pull it off.
That’s exciting news for fans of the first game, but we don’t know if this means a direct sequel to Until Dawn itself or an entirely new IP, either of which would be welcome. Alongside Rush of Blood, Supermassive Games is also bringing its old PlayStation Move title, Tumble, to PlayStation VR. The UK-based group has plenty going on in the VR scene, then, and we can’t wait to see more from it.
