During the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) 2018 show, First Contact Entertainment were around to showcase their upcoming virtual reality (VR) title, Firewall Zero Hour. VRFocus’ Nina Salomons got the chance to speak with Damoun Shabestari, Creative producer, First Contact Entertainment, about the title and learn more about the drive to build a multiplayer, tactical shooter in VR.
For those unfair, Firewall Zero Hour is a four-versus-four, tactical multiplayer first-person shooter (FPS) in which two teams face off against each other to defend or attack a laptop containing key intel. As Shabestari explains, there is a lot to the core gameplay of the title: “As an attack your basically trying to infiltrate the enemy, barriers, and traps to take down the firewall and hack the laptop to gain the intel. As a defender you a preventing them for doing so with the equipment that you have from mines, door blockers that jam doors, preventing the attacks from coming in.”
The project title was first revealed back in late 2017 with a number of new screenshots being released just ahead of E3 2018. With a promise of intense, slow paced action that rewards players for working together and planning ahead, the title has a unique appeal. Shabestari revealed that the drive to build such a videogame was from the team’s wish to play such a title themselves.
“So when we first started this project we wanted a game we wanted to play but we also knew the community wants it. There are those pretty loud online about getting locomotion into VR, getting an online component into VR, that’s been our basic goal from the start and when we started out we really wanted to get the locomotion figured out first and really master that to really work well with the type of game we’re playing because we’re not a run and gun game we very slow paced, communication is key, and just strategy, working with your team members to achieve the objective. So we basically wanted to make a game that we wanted to play in VR, and that pretty much translate as to what is wanted by the online side of things.”
The team at First Contact Entertainment have a background in making videogames though we the team coming from a number of past studios. As Shabestari explains in the interview, the team are all fans of first person shooters and really believe in VR and want to be behind it all the way. Working with Sony has also been a good experience for the team, taking advantage of products such as the PlayStation Aim controller to further the immersion within the title.
Firewall Zero Hour is planned to release later this year for PlayStation VR and you can check out the full interview below. For more on the title and E3 2018, keep reading VRFocus.