After skipping E3 2019 altogether, Twisted Pixel is here a week later on a Friday with a big bit of news: Defector is officially releasing very soon on July 11 for just $19.99 exclusively on the Oculus Home store for Rift and Rift S. Facebook announced the news today on the Oculus Blog.
To be frank, I was starting to get worried about Defector. I first played the game over a year ago back before E3 2018 but its been conspicuously absent from shows like GDC, F8, and E3 ever since. Thankfully, the developers appear to have been just heads-down on development.
The last time I saw a demo of Defector was all the way back on September 26 at a pre-OC5 event. Between the various demos I’ve seen surprisingly deep melee combat, competent shooting mechanics, branching dialogue situations, high-octane thrills like driving sports cars off the cargo ramp of a flying plane, and even back ally chase scenes. It’s got all the ingredients to be everything you’d ever want out of a Mission Impossible VR game other than the actual IP backing it up.
Twisted Pixel’s previous VR effort, Wilson’s Heart, was a bizarre and quirky, albeit unsettling, first-person adventure thriller that took place in a black and white hospital. Clearly, Defector is a very different type of game that we’re eager to see more of. Most specifically, we’re really curious just how much variation the branching mission structure format allows as well as how many unlockables there are for all of the optional objectives. Will we be able to jump forward on subsequent playthroughs just to the decision points, or will we have to play entire missions from start to finish multiple times to see all the possibilities?
Let us know what you think of Defector so far down in the comments below. The game is due to release exclusively on Oculus Rift and Rift S on July 11 for $19.99. That feels quite a bit cheaper than I think most people were expecting.
