Earlier this year I wrote about breathtaking it was to don a PSVR headset and stare down massive colossi in Shadow of the Colossus when its remaster released on PS4 in February. Using Cinematic Mode, you can play it and any other non-VR PS4 game inside the headset on a massive screen that nearly encompasses your entire field of view. There is no head-tracking, it’s not 3D, and you can’t reach out and interact using your hands or controller at all — but it’s undoubtedly immersive.
Then when you switch over and play a brand new game like Red Dead Redemption 2 using the feature and switch to first-person view, it’s so close to the real thing it feels unfair. I found myself so engrossed in Rockstar’s meticulously detailed world that I couldn’t help but turn my head side-to-side at various moments expecting my vision to follow inside the game world. If you’re confused on how Cinematic Mode works, it’s like this. Similar to using Big Screen and opting for the void environment.
Just today we published an excerpt from an interview with Joel Breton, GM of Vive Studios, in which he discusses the success of LA Noire: The VR Case Files and he states that Rockstar, the studio behind that game, Grand Theft Auto, and Red Dead Redemption, is “not done” with VR yet.
Obviously this is far from confirmation that anything official is coming, but it got us curious. I received a copy of Red Dead Redemption 2 early (you can watch my review right here) so I fired it up inside the PSVR headset and was honestly blown away by how it felt.
The lower resolution sucks away some of the fidelity when compared to my 70-inch 4K HDR TV, but the all-encompassing immersion helps make up for it. Moments like in the GIF below feel so much more intense when you’re wearing a headset even if it isn’t actually VR:
Anyway, maybe it’ll happen one day. We hope. What do you think? Would you play a game like Red Dead Redemption 2 in VR?
Let us know down in the comments below! Red Dead Redemption 2 releases on PS4 and Xbox One tomorrow, October 26th, 2018.
