Ever since it was announced at Bethesda’s E3 2016 press conference last year Fallout 4 VR has quickly risen up the ranks of conversation to become one of the most anticipated VR games on the market. We came away mostly impressed with it when we tried it out during the show and both Pete Hines and Todd Howard have since gone on record to emphasize that this is the full, uncompromised Fallout 4 experience receiving the VR treatment — it’s not just a demo or abbreviated experience.
Earlier this month at the 2017 PAX East conference, gaming personality Hip Hop Gamer did an on-camera interview with Bethesda’s VP of PR and Marketing, Pete Hines. During the interview Hines mostly talked about Nintendo’s new Switch console, but at the end he discussed the current development status of Fallout 4 VR by recalling a conversation he had with Lead Designer Todd Howard:
“I talked to Todd the other day and I was like, ‘Hey how’s Fallout 4 [VR] coming?’ and he said, ‘Pete, Fallout 4 VR is the most incredible thing you’ve ever seen in your life. You can’t even imagine what it’s like playing in VR and how realistic it looks with everywhere you turn your head. It’s gonna blow your mind. It’s the craziest thing you’ve ever seen.’
…We will have it at E3.”
Details are still scarce outside of that limited demo we saw almost a year ago, but word on the street is that multiple locomotion systems are in the works, as opposed to just teleportation, which is all I saw at E3 last year. Hopefully this new demo has a lot more to show.
Obviously it’s the VP of Marketing’s job to hype up a big release like the entirety of Fallout 4 coming to VR, but strong words like that bode well for a company with a track record as positive as Bethesda’s. Let’s cross out fingers that all of this extra time with the underlying code in Fallout 4 means the VR edition will hopefully have fewer bugs this time around.
As it stands, the HTC Vive is the only confirmed platform for Fallout 4 VR and it is expected to release this year. Hopefully more details will come out right before or during E3 2017.
