Oculus Connect 6 has offered up a deluge of VR news, and on stage today Facebook announced launch dates for both Asgard’s Wrath and Stormland.
Asgard’s Wrath is slated to arrive on October 10th for the Rift platform.
The combat-adventure game is an Oculus exclusive, and is being built by the Oculus-backed Sanzaru Games. We went hands on at E3 earlier this summer, so check out our hands-on which is only a light dusting of the game’s purported 30+ hour gameplay length—something that promises to be a true ‘AAA’ VR game.
Stormland, the next (and likely final) Oculus exclusive title from Insomniac Games, will come a bit later, as it’s slated to arrive on November 14th.
The game will feature drop-in / drop-out co-op for two players, and a vast ever-changing environment that promises a constant flow of remixed and new content. Check out the latest info and trailer showing of the two-player co-op and combat tactics to get a better idea of what awaits.
This news is breaking. Check back for more info on all things AR/VR to come from OC6.
Community Download is a weekly discussion-focused articles series published (usually) every Monday in which we pose a single, core question to you all, our readers, in the spirit of fostering discussion and debate. For today, we want to know what you think is going to go down at Oculus Connect 6 later this week.
We’re finally at the start of Oculus Connect week. On Wednesday in San Jose the sixth Oculus Connect conference (OC6) will kick off and should include lots of big headlines for the VR industry. Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg will be on stage, as well as Michael Abrash, John Carmack, and various other heads at the VR company.
More over, we’ll finally get to see what Respawn’s VR shooter is like, which has been shrouded in nearly complete darkness ever since it was announced two years ago. We don’t even know the name or setting yet! But if you want to see my predictions for what it could be, check those out here.
We’ve also got a big list of predictions for the rest of the conference right here, including our thoughts on the Oculus social VR strategy, the focus on AAA-quality content, and more.
But for this article we want to know what you think: What are your Oculus Connect 6 predictions? What do you think Respawn’s shooter will be? Do you think we’ll see a lot of AR news? Will we finally get release dates for Lone Echo 2, Stormland, and Asgard’s Wrath? Let us know down in the comments below!
Could we one day see Oculus exclusive games like Lone Echo, Stormland and Asgard’s Wrath on PSVR?
Oculus’ Jason Rubin would like that very much. Speaking to Kotaku at E3 last month, Oculus’ VP of Special Gaming Initiatives said he would “love” to make a trade with Sony.
“We’ve thought about it,” he replied when asked if Oculus games could come to PSVR. “I would love to make a trade with Sony. You know they have great stuff that they funded, and we have great stuff we’ve funded.”
Oculus publishes exclusive games for Rift and Quest under its Oculus Studios label. The Facebook-owned company funds games from developers like Ready at Dawn and Insomniac under this initiative. Sony, meanwhile, owns developers like Sony London that work on PSVR exclusive titles such as Blood & Truth. Both companies produce some of the most polished, visually astounding and all-round best games in VR.
But could a trade actually work? The VR scene finds itself in an interesting stage of collaboration in its early years, where companies are more concerned with making the industry sustainable than they are directly competing with rivals. Oculus could certainly stand to benefit from selling its software on PSVR, which has sold over 4.4 million units (Rift and Quest figures aren’t known).
The real question is if Sony would be willing to cooperate. PlayStation-published games tend to remain exclusive to PlayStation, but bringing high-end PC titles to its next VR headset, rumored to be supporting the next PlayStation console, could be hugely advantageous. At the same time, we’d love to play the likes of Astro Bot: Rescue Mission on a Rift.
Sanzaru Games and Oculus Studios showed off a new demo for their upcoming melee adventure Asgard’s Wrath at this year’s E3. We got a chance to not only jump in to see more of the game’s questing, but also get a feel for the scope of the world ahead.
I had around 20 minutes in the new demo—only just enough to sample other important components of the game besides rote combat, which I saw a fair bit of in my first hands-on at GDC in March.
This time around I got to create chimeric buddies from the world’s beasts, solve light puzzles while dungeoning, and accumulate loot for crafting along the way. What most impressed me about the game though was its visual fidelity and rich environments, something I hope to explore more during the game’s purported 30+ hour duration.
E3 2019 is all but over at this point. We kicked off the week with our massive E3 VR Showcase, a first of its kind deluge of amazing VR game reveals, announcements, and interviews that shined a spotlight on what’s coming over the next several months to VR headsets. And while that was packed full of lots of great stuff, only a fraction of it was actually playable at E3 itself.
Now that we’ve played all the games at the show this year and seen what companies have to offer, we’ve decided to round up our list of nominees for Best of Show in VR at E3 2019 as well as let our community on Twitter pick their winner for the People’s Choice Award. You can see the results for yourself right here.
People’s Choice VR Game Award E3 2019 Winner
Asgard’s Wrath
To be honest, if you watched the poll results coming in over time, it was never really a question which game would win. The excitement for Asgard’s Wrath, the 30+ hour action-adventure RPG epic from Sanzaru Games and Oculus, is through the roof. Prior to E3 kicking off we debuted 20 minutes of all-new gameplay and we included an interview in our E3 VR showcase with lots of insight and details into the game.
Even though Oculus brought out the big guns this E3 with a ton of great looking exclusive titles like Lone Echo 2, Asgard’s Wrath, and Stormland, none of them stood out as much as Espire.1 did. This E3 we got the chance to play Espire.1 on both Rift S and Quest and even though there were obvious graphical differences, the game played pretty much exactly the same which is extremely impressive.
Espire.1 is a stealth action game in the same vein as Metal Gear Solid that puts you in the shoes of a stealth android that sneaks through levels, climbs on any metal surface, and uses a litany of weapons to get past guards and enemies. You also have the ability to slow down time, look around corners using wrist-based cameras, and even detect enemies in the level by activating the button on the side of your visor. All of that ambitious design coalesces into a smooth, exciting VR game that innovates not only in terms of building a stealth shooter for VR, but also in terms of comfort options for players.
Backed by Oculus Studios, Sanzaru Games’ next big title for Rift, Asgard’s Wrath, doesn’t have a release date yet, although at E3 this week I got a chance to try out the latest demo, which reveals more of the game’s story, dungeon crawling, light puzzles, and magical beast companions.
Firstly, I have to say that Asgard’s Wrath is an extremely attractive game visually, at least from what I saw today at E3 and at the game’s debut at GDC earlier this year. From engrossing environments to well-realized characters, replete with excellent motion capture, Asgard’s Wrath looks like the sort of game that’s poised to set a high visual bar for the medium.
Don’t get me wrong: I have my niggles (more on that in a bit), but it appears that Sanzaru is building a game that’s truly aiming high to deliver on the grandiosity of the epic Norse Pantheon-inspired source material. All with a reported 30+ hours of gameplay, no less.
If you haven’t heard about Asgard’s Wrath, here’s the skinny: you’re a fledgling god taken under Loki’s wing on the path to true godhood. Loki—the Norse trickster god—needs you to physically possess a handful of mortal heroes and go on quests using each of their own abilities and weapons to ‘fulfill their destinies’—just what that means, I’m not sure for now. Beyond possessing the human-sized mortals, you can also grow back to your original titanic size to solve environmental puzzles, and enchant the world’s beasts to help you fight deadly monsters and solve some of the puzzles that vex your mortal heroes.
In a new demo of Asgard’s Wrath at E3 this week, I basically picked up where I left off last at GDC. In the last demo, I saved Loki from a giant Kraken, so he invited me out to a raucous Asgardian tavern for a refreshing pint of mead in thanks. This is where he saddles me with my first real mission as his new pupil. Drinking with Loki and clinking my tankard in cheers was a fun little piece of character interaction that I wish more games made use of.
Loki tells me a Shield Maiden needs my help. Whisked away to Midgard, the land of mortals, I learn that the Shield Maiden is on a quest to avenge the death of her brother who was killed by the Norse god Týr.
Spitting vitriol at the heavens and rowing furiously in the night, her warship is smashed by an absolutely titanic god who marches through the tossing sea at waist height. After she was washed ashore and sputtering awake the next morning, I got my chance to possess the Shield Maiden and go through some of the basics like finding and placing items in my inventory, eating to replenish health, magically creating an animal companion from a beached shark, and venturing forth into a cliff-side dungeon.
These beastly companions play a big role in the game, and essentially act as ambling Swiss Army knives suited to various tasks. Shark buddy has his own weaponry and health points too, so he’s useful as backup in a fight, but he more specifically has his own abilities that match the many puzzles that lay ahead.
Sharkie likes to chew on dead people; ordering him to climb up and chow down on a dangling corpse typically opens a door, moves an obstacle, or reveals an access point to a hidden item. Thankfully, he also follows you automatically so you don’t have to worry too much about where he is at any given time. I have a feeling though that Shark Bro (and the game’s other animal pals) will be busy doing more than just slashing at baddies while you sit back and relax. At one point, I had to order him to open a door that unexpectedly revealed a room full of enemies; ordering him to help me out with the fight lowered the door again, shutting off access to the impromptu battle pit.
Sanzaru Games developer Jenny Huang described the game’s puzzles to me as ‘light’—as in puzzles that a casual user wouldn’t have trouble solving. In fact, a highlighted aura envelopes key puzzle pieces if you take too long to find them, which isn’t something I’m particularly fond of. The studio wasn’t ready to comment on whether puzzle hints could be toggled off in settings, but as an avid puzzle-playing-person, I’m hoping they do.
I do have a few more gripes with some of the things I saw today, all of which seem like fairly well established components of the game.
The UI. I dislike it. If you need something that isn’t already bound to one of your quick-draw slots, you have to hold the menu button, futz with a few different classes of items to find what you want and laser-pointer it into the desired slot. This sounds like I’m being a pedantic turd, and you may have a point there, but I was really hoping to leave behind the legacy adventure game UI conventions for something decidedly more ‘VR native’, like an armory or ready room with all of the available items on display that you pick up naturally and place in your various holsters.
Image captured by Road to VR
From what I’ve seen thus far, I’m not a fan of how object interaction is handled in Asgard’s Wrath either. Items have a sticky ‘snap-to’ quality that just doesn’t quite feel immersive. For example, reaching out for an item snaps it jarringly to your hand, which feels more like having something superglued to a paralyzed model of a hand than actually holding an object naturally. One of the best implementations of virtual object interaction to date is Lone Echo (and by proxy its more sporty sibling Echo VR), which uses dynamic hand poses for a more fluid and realistic way of dealing with its many virtual objects. I really wish Sanzaru took some of those lessons to heart here, as I think many object-focused VR games would benefit from it in lieu of proper five-finger tracking.
Though it’s sure to be a major part of the game, combat was a really minor part of the E3 demo in particular—there were only a few low-level zombie types—easily dispatched with my lone sword. I would suggest you take a look at my first hands-on to get a good sense of what melee combat has to offer in Asgard’s Wrath.
If you’re short on time though, here’s the abridged edition: melee isn’t as intuitive as I’d initially hoped, and suffers from some of the weightlessness that comes part and parcel with non-physics-based combat systems. It can still be fun once you learn how the game wants you to play it, although I imagine it’ll take some getting used to before you’re able to really sink your teeth in.
In my 20-minute demo, I wasn’t given the opportunity to check out the game’s crafting mechanic, although there seems to be plenty of ingredients laying about, like a bag of coins collected from a smashed urn, or a few rolls of leather and rotten flesh from a slain zombie. I got the sense that crafting will be an important component of the game as you gather recipes to make rage-inducing meads and health potions of various abilities.
I also wanted to get some more time in the megalithic god-size mode to see the interplay between god-scale and human scale, but never got the chance outside of a brief tutorial. Maybe next time.
Despite my grumblings above, my time with Asgard’s Wrath has me fully prepared to dive back in for more. As a 30+ hour game though, its success is contingent on a few factors we haven’t really had the opportunity to consider in the realm of VR. If the game can make good on its grandiose story, keep puzzles interesting, and ease players into fully understanding its combat system, it may very well celebrate a fair measure of success when it releases this Fall. As with all long-format VR games though, clunk has the ability to magnify over time and level design can grow stale if not carefully scaled to the player’s continuously expanding expectations.
Although I’m still unsure of whether or not the studio has bitten off more than it can chew with Asgard’s Wrath, what I’ve seen so far gives me hope that it’s going to be worth the time and effort.
When I tried Asgard’s Wrath at GDC 2019 earlier this year I was enamored with the intense combat system. It really made me feel like a badass warrior with its precision-based parrying, fast-paced sparring, and emphasis on dismemberment and decapitation. But that demo was almost entirely just straight combat and that’s it. It didn’t give me a good look at the game as a whole at all, which is a shame because they’ve been promising a 30+ hour action-adventure RPG epic ever since it was first announced.
Thankfully Sanzaru invited me to their Foster City-based offices ahead of E3 2019 to check out an extended three-hour long demo that spanned a large chunk of one of the game’s several sagas. If you tune into our E3 VR showcase later today you can see the interview I filmed at their studio during that visit, or in the meantime you can watch the 20-minute highlight video below recapping all of my best moments:
Since I already knew so much about the melee-based sword and shield combat going into this demo, I tried to spend a lot of time exploring other aspects of the game. Specifically, I wanted to see what the dungeons and puzzle elements were like given my affinity for The Legend of Zelda and The Elder Scrolls.
My demo focused specifically on a warrior maiden that was on a quest to slay Tyr, the Norse God of War. After her ship wrecks on an island you, a God in training, take control of her and explore the island to find gear. Much to my delight I could smash open pots to find loot, crafting materials, and crucial food items to restore health and undead draugr enemies frequently popped up to challenge me. It all had a very organic feeling, like this was a living, breathing world with depth and tons of optional areas to poke around in while exploring. There was usually a critical path to follow for the main quest, but I was never forced to do anything.
Since my demo was only a small slice of one section of the overall game I can’t speak to what things are like later on, but the puzzles I saw were very encouraging and reminded me of Zelda games. They mostly revolved around commanding animal companions to activate switches, block hazards, or venture forward to move something blocking my path. I got a brief glimpse of one moment in which I had to think outside the box a bit and mix two companion assists together to pass the puzzle and Sanzaru promised there is a lot more of that later on.
For all intents and purposes, this really does feel like a true AAA experience. In games like Skyrim VR it’s full of caveats since it was never designed with VR in mind originally and brief one or two hour long adventures such as Vanishing Realms offer just barely enough to quench your thirst. But after three straight hours, I felt like I’d barely even scratched the surface with this one.
Sanzaru explained that after this saga you will meet new heroes to take control over. In the announcement trailer embedded below you can see a rogue with a nifty dual-wielding fighting style as well as a mage that uses a staff and magical powers in combat. I know there are bows as well to use, as well as over half a dozen different companions that can aid you on your adventures in a ton of different ways.
What ties it all together is a strong sense of cohesion. Voice acting is all top-tier and lends a serious amount of gravity to situations, extending beyond the feeling that you’re just playing a simple game. Taking a quick glance at the world map revealed several different “realms” and planets peppered around the galaxy each of which is broken into regions with multiple fast travel points. It’s not a true open world, per se, but the regions and levels all seem enormous.
Throughout each area you’ll come across sections that you can access yet because you lack a specific animal companion or particular hero with a certain skillset needed. In that way it has a bit of a Metroidvania vibe to it all as it encourages re-exploring areas with new abilities once you advance further into the game. But even besides all of that Sanzaru is insistent that there is easily a few dozen hours of original content even if you focused on just playing the critical path primarily.
Physics-based sandbox combat games such as Blade and Sorcery do a wonderful job of really emulating a realistic style of combat and even though Asgard’s Wrath has an intense, visceral system it’s not quite on that level. Instead, they do rely on scripted animations, but it’s mixed together with dynamic dismemberment and lots of gore to provide a good middle ground between canned animations and pure ragdoll physics.
Asgard’s Wrath and its enormous 30+ hour action-adventure RPG campaign is developed by Sanzaru Games and published by Oculus Studios. From what we’ve heard it’s due out this fall exclusively on the Oculus Rift platform. Let us know if you have any questions down in the comments below!
Asgard’s Wrath is one of the most highly anticipated VR games of the year, hands-down. Ever since it was first unveiled back in February of this year, it’s seemed a bit too good to be true. Sanzaru and Oculus are promising a massive 30+ hour action-adventure RPG epic that spans a vast universe of Norse mythology. After spending three hours with a very specific vertical slice of the game and only scratching the surface of what it has to offer, I’m starting to think those promises may hold some weight.
Our full gameplay video featuring 20 minutes of all-new VR RPG epicness in Asgard’s Wrath goes live on the UploadVR YouTube channel today at precisely 11AM PT. If you’re reading this then you’re a bit early — but don’t worry. You can click “Set Reminder” at the link below to get notified once it premieres:
In the gameplay video above I’ve edited together 20-minutes worth of footage from my three-hour long pre-E3 2019 demo all captured while playing on an Oculus Rift S. You’ll see some bits of the opening, the first mortal hero you control (a sword and shield warrior) as well as two of the animal companions (a shark warrior and turtle warrior) that are both used very differently to solve puzzles.
Then of course there’s also a heavy dose of combat peppered throughout the video. Asgard’s Wrath employs a very active and visceral combat system that requires quick reflexes to time your parries just right and open up enemies to counter attacks. Later on in the game Sanzaru has told us that the other heroes will play very differently as well.
Asgard’s Wrath is releasing this fall exclusively for Oculus Rift headsets. Let us know what you think of the gameplay and stay tuned to UploadVR this week for more details on Asgard’s Wrath and other upcoming VR games. And don’t forget to watch the E3 VR Showcase we’re debuting on June 10 at 8:45AM PT with over an hour of VR game details and new reveals.
One of the more compelling and exciting virtual reality (VR) titles to be announced this year is Oculus Rift exclusive Asgard’s Wrath From Sanzaru Games and Oculus Studios. Aiming for a big action-adventure experience with lots of bloody combat and giant boss battles to contend with, information has slowly been appearing since the videogame was first revealed just over a month ago. First, there were screenshots and this week there’s been more gameplay footage to enjoy, so VRFocus has compiled all the video footage released so far right here.
On a Quest
Oculus went all out for the Game Developers Conference (GDC) 2019 this week, announcing the Oculus Rift S, as well as letting guests get some hands-on time with its latest videogames, including Asgard’s Wrath. It also just so happened to release a couple of new videos showcasing the most gameplay footage yet. The first is called ‘Questing’ and as the title rightly suggests this is the player out on their epic journey, giving you a chance to see the core of the title, exploring ancient ruins, collecting useful items, and having the odd fight without getting killed as a mortal.
And then there’s god mode. As your all-powerful alter ego who’s on the rather tall side – like any god – this next video is much more of a showpiece where players have to fight the legendary Kraken.
Blood, sweat and more blood
The following videos are shorter bite-sized pieces showcasing smaller fighting elements of Asgard’s Wrath. One thing is for sure, Sanzaru Games is holding back when it comes to the visceral quality of the combat, as it looks quite easy to remove an enemy’s head from their shoulders or carve them up like a Sunday roast.
So that’s your lot for now, as Sanzaru Games release further footage of Asgard’s Wrath VRFocus will be sure to keep you notified.
Asgard’s Wrath is an upcoming combat RPG from Sanzaru Games, the studio that created Rift exclusives Marvel Powers United VR (2018) and Ripcoil (2016). It’s slated to launch on Rift and the newly unveiled Rift S in 2019, although to whet our appetites in the meantime the studio released some fresh footage at their public GDC 2019 debut this week, showing off what to expect from the game’s combat and puzzle-laden quests.
We only got a chance to play some of the beginning storyline and learn the basics of combat during our hands-on with Asgard’s Wrath, so everything seen in the questing video (linked above and below) is news to us.
The setup is this: in Asgard’s Wrath you’re a fledgling god who must help a set of Nordic heroes through their own discrete story lines. Each hero as their own load-out and abilities, and the objective is to complete each hero’s story to obtain a special rune stone for Loki, who basically plays as the game’s grand task master.
Clocking in just under eight minutes, the video presents a number of classic RPG tropes to go along with the game’s decidedly involved combat system, making use of shields, swords for attacks and parrying, and some magical weapons such as a throwable axe that you can recall with the flick of the wrist.
Image courtesy Sanzaru Games
On top of that, some of light puzzles seem to make use of your weapons, forcing you to throw your axe accurately to cut down a rope suspending a plank bridge.
The level seems to be brimming with items such as a cross-bow, crafting items such as berries and mushrooms, and treasure too, which all nestles into the game’s classic-style RPG inventory menu. Only a few things are actually holstered to your body in the game, all of which seem to relate directly to combat.
Image courtesy Sanzaru Games
One of the major mechanics in Asgard’s Wrath is the ability to magically transform the world’s animals into chimeric allies. A battle-toad pal follows you around automatically, taking down the level’s brutish enemies with his trident and giant lily pad-shaped shield.
You can order your toad buddy to do specific tasks too, like grab a key with his long tongue from behind the bars of a jail cell or attack a specific group of baddies on command.
Image courtesy Sanzaru Games
There’s no denying that Asgard’s Wrath is a visually stunning game. You can also probably tell that it’s not an easy game either when it comes to the game’s combat system. Multiple enemies put your melee skills to the test, as they barge in with increasingly tough attacks and armor plating that you have to break before getting a good shot at finally knocking down their HP bar.
Unlike the popular combat sandbox Blade & Sorcery, Asgard’s Wrath isn’t entirely physics-based, meaning you’ll have to pay close attention to when baddies are charging up, or telegraphic vulnerability to land those head-slicing hits.
Sanzaru isn’t ready to talk specific release dates yet, although they’ve said it’ll be headed to the Oculus platform sometime this year. It’s said to offer a 30+ hours of adventuring, promising to be the “deepest title yet” from Sanzaru Games.
