Following VR in the early days of Oculus and the Rift was a lot like being a kid. You had all these hopes and dreams for the future, but then the adults would come along and crush them. Any talk by developers or executives you listened to would spend a lot of time addressing the dangers of VR. It was all rules and warnings; VR makes people sick, you can’t take camera control away, you simply have to build VR games from the ground up.
Porting games to VR was strictly off limits.
Indeed, the first wave of titles on Rift, PSVR and Vive have mainly been entirely new creations, properly optimized for headsets and their new control schemes. But fans have itchy feet, and the more amazing AAA titles that come out for PS4, Xbox One and PC, the more we yearn for bigger and better stuff in VR. The install base isn’t really there to justify massive costs on development just yet though, and shorter development cycles are churning out smaller games. There’s a thriving ecosystem of content on all three major headsets, but arguably none of them yet have that definitive must-play experience. So how do we get around it?
Okay, well, maybe we’ll all just ignore that bit about porting games, right?
And just like that, we have direct ports of both Fallout 4 and Skyrim, two games many of us have dreamed of stepping into with a headset. They complement the likes of DiRT Rally and a string of other titles that threw out the rule book and created VR editions. Make no mistake, companies have put time into making sure these games work in VR. Fallout 4 was announced over a year ago and still won’t be ready until October, for example. Still it’s hard not to look at these ports and not feel like we’re conveniently forgetting some of the golden rules of VR laid out so long ago.
Truth be told I’m happy we’re experimenting with the concept (sorry, VR purists). Doom VFR reuses assets from last year’s shooter and still managed to be one of the best VR games at E3, while DiRT is arguably the best racing game for VR headsets yet. After yet another E3 in which EA states its waiting for VR’s install base to grow and other publishers remain similarly timid, it’s increasingly clear that getting AAA on VR is only going to work by cutting a few corners. If that means replaying some of the best games of the past decade instead of something completely new, then so be it.
The problem is that the floodgates are open now, and I want more games to pour through. The recent rumors that LA Noire might be getting a VR adaptation have me intrigued, but there’s one game that seems ripe for an in-depth VR port – BioShock. If I had to bet on what Sony, Oculus of HTC would next throw money at to get the wheels going it would be that. I’d also love to see the PS3-era Killzone games brought into VR along with a swathe of other first-person shooters. If Bethesda can do it, surely anyone else can too?
E3 might be a sign that we’re about to enter the age of the VR remaster. I personally don’t think that’s a bad thing as long as we have a steady stream of new content on the way too. People wanted to know when VR’s Skyrim would arrive. Literally speaking, it’s very close.
