Cliff Bleszinski once said that Titanfall wouldn’t work well in VR. We’re inclined to agree, but that seemingly hasn’t stopped developer Respawn Entertainment from giving it a go.
In an interview with Japanese site EAA!!, the developer’s Joel Emslie revealed that he tested VR support for the game’s upcoming sequel, Titanfall 2, himself. “I tried doing a little VR reduction in-house,” he said according to a quick Google translation. When pressed about it, Emslie noted that there were some aspects of the game that worked very well inside a headset. He said that being picked up by one of the game’s huge Titan mechs, inspecting their designs and reaching high points were all really “fun” experiences.
As expected, though, the developer found problems with nausea when playing the game in VR. It’s hardly surprising; Titanfall 2 is a fast-paced multiplayer first-person shooter in which players are constantly running on walls, gliding through the air with jet packs, and jumping into the titular war machines. It’s got all the ingredients for a fun experience on standard displays, but it’s also a recipe for VR simulation sickness. Emslie said that solving these issues would be “difficult” right now, but expressed hope that they would improve in the future.
It’s going to take a long time for VR tech to get to that spot, and it’s dependent on software developers making well-designed, considered content just as much as it’s about hardware manufacturers improving headsets.
Don’t expect to see Titanfall 2 in VR any time soon, then, but we’d argue there is still plenty of potential for a short VR experience in which you control one of the game’s mechs. Publisher EA is already doing something similar with its Star Wars: Battlefront Rogue One X-Wing Mission for PlayStation VR as is shooter rival Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare with its Jackal Assault content. These brief experiences will serve as companion pieces to their respective games, offering a slice of their worlds that makes sense for VR support rather than awkwardly trying to integrate it into the full thing.
Until VR technology grows to accommodate much more intensive experiences like Titanfall 2, that’s as close as we’re going to get.
