Der Exklusivtitel Blood & Truth für PlayStation VR (PSVR) gilt als ausgereifter Nachfolger der Tech-Demo The London Heist, welcher auf der PlayStation VR Worlds zu finden war. Erstmals wurde der First-Person-Shooter Blood & Truth um die Londoner Unterwelt und den vorherrschenden kriminellen Machenschaften auf der Games Week 2017 in Paris vorgestellt. Nun gibt es neue Einblicke in die VR-Gangster-Erfahrung.
Blood & Truth für PlayStation VR (PSVR)
Die amerikanischen Journalisten von VR Focus konnten den PSVR-Titel in einem 10-minütigen Preview Build genauer unter die Lupe nehmen und berichten über ihre Erfahrungen mit dem First-Person-Shooter. Blood & Truth von den London Studios ist in der kriminellen Unterwelt des modernen Londons angesetzt. Dabei legten die Entwickler viel Wert darauf, die Atmosphäre klassischer London-East-End-Gangsterfilme aufzufangen und in ihrem Actiontitel umzusetzen. Dazu zählen ebenso dramatische wie auch filmreife und emotionsgeladene Szenen.
Im Spiels schlüpft ihr in die Rolle des Elitesoldaten Ryan Marks, um auf einer halsbrecherischen Mission eure Familie aus den Fängen eines bösartigen Overlords zu befreien. Dieser stößt während seiner Aufgabe auf allerlei Charaktere, mit denen er automatisch interagiert, um neue Hinweise zu erhalten und die Geschichte voranzutreiben – Flachwitze inklusive. Außerdem stehen euch bei manchen Begegnungen verschiedene Dialog-Optionen zur Auswahl, die eventuell Einfluss auf den späteren Spielverlauf haben könnten. Über die genauen Auswirkungen halten sich die Entwickler bisher jedoch bedeckt.
Das Spiel leitet euch während der Geschichte linear vorwärts, um zum nächsten wichtigen Punkt zu gelangen. Währenddessen gilt es stets interaktive Aufgaben zu erledigen, die sinnvoll mit der Story verknüpft sind. So muss man beispielsweise Videokameras nutzen, um einen unbeaufsichtigten Durchgang zu finden, oder Lüftungsschächte zur Infiltrierung eines Gebäudes zweckentfremden. Außerdem dürfen zahlreiche Feuergefechte mit den Handlangern des Oberbösewichts nicht fehlen.
Die Steuerung soll durchaus intuitiv und einfach gehalten sein. Dafür kommen zwei PlayStation-Move-Controller zum Einsatz, mit denen sich der Spieler per Knopfdruck auf den Move-Button vorwärts bewegt. Dank hervorgehobenen Objekten und einem Pfeil, der die Richtung weist, schreitet man so zu den festgelegten Positionen voran. Sobald man diese erreicht, kann man per Knopfdruck auf die Face-Buttons in Action-Sequenzen Deckung nehmen oder dank Bewegungserkennung mit den Objekten interagieren.
Trotz der linearen Vorgaben des Spiels soll also dank actionreichen Feuergefechten, abwechselnden Aufgaben und gut durchdachter Steuerung keine Langeweile auftreten. Die bisherigen Eindrücke wirken durchaus vielversprechend. Wir sind gespannt, wie sich der VR-Titel letztlich entwickelt und was uns zukünftig noch erwartet. Blood & Truth soll 2018 exklusiv für PlayStation VR (PSVR)erscheinen.
Following up on PlayStation VR Worlds “London Heist” vignette, Sony’s London Studios is doubling down on VR action in a bigger, better game called ‘Blood & Truth.’
Yesterday certainly held plenty of surprises for fans of PlayStation VR with Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE) releasing a barrage of info on new videogames. As part of its Paris Games Week press conference SIE announced that Sony London Studio is working on a new virtual reality (VR) called Blood & Truth with a short teasing trailer. For those that want to know more about the title a new video has been released interviewing the dev team.
Blood & Truth is the spiritual successor to Sony London Studio’s The London Heist, which featured as part of launch compendium PlayStation VR Worlds. Set in the underground world of London’s organised crime, The London Heist featured a mixture of gameplay mainly revolving around a first-person shooter mechanic, with players involved with car chases and more.
With Blood & Truth this idea has now been expanded with players cast as Ryan Marks, who leaves London for a stint in the army, only to return to find his family has been murdered. Now out for revenge, Marks’ quest will take him through the city’s seedy underbelly, breaking and entering his way into enemy hideouts, casinos and all manner of mayhem.
Players will dual wield pistols and automatic weapons as they gun down enemies as well as finding secret routes and picking locks in order to gain entry to enemy hideouts. As Stuart Whyte, Blood & Truth’s Director explains in the video: “[We wanted to] dial it up to 11, and really just amp up the action.”
In The London Heist players were static for each sequence, so for Blood & Truth they can now move about far more freely, reload, plant explosives while taking enemies out, crawl through vents and loads more, making for a far more interactive and immersive experience.
Exclusive to PlayStation VR, Blood & Truth will require two PlayStation Move motion controllers to play and while no release date has yet been confirmed it’s expected to arrive at some point in 2018.
Check out the interview below and as development continues VRFocus will keep you updated.
Sony’s London Studio—who built the well received VR Worlds experiences for PSVR—is back. This time around the studio isn’t building a slew of PSVR samples, but rather a AAA scope action shooter in the same vein as the acclaimed ‘London Heist’ vignette from VR Worlds. This isn’t just more of the same though; what we’ve seen of Blood & Truth so far clearly moves the needle of agency and immersion on PSVR with a slew of smart locomotion mechanics and world interactivity.
Since it’s still in its infancy, VR game design is moving very fast compared to traditional game design. Many VR titles can feel outdated in just a matter of months because of their reliance on ‘old’ VR design techniques.
‘London Heist’, however, wasn’t just good for its time. It still holds up (now over a year old) as one of VR’s most visceral experiences, no doubt thanks to the talented team at Sony’s London Studio.
And the studio hasn’t been resting on their laurels. Instead, they’ve set off to take the lessons they learned from creating ‘London Heist’ and the other VR Worlds experiences and apply it all to a brand new PSVR game which they say is targeting ‘AAA’ quality and scope.
Blood & Truth definitely has the same great look and feel of ‘London Heist’, but it’s actually a brand new universe, new story, and new characters, this time set in modern London. The game, powered by the studio’s in-house engine, sits right up there with the best looking PSVR titles to date.
Image courtesy Sony
While ‘London Heist’ consisted almost entirely of static scenes with no locomotion (fighting from behind a desk, sitting in a chair—save for one scene in a car), Blood & Truth greatly improves agency by letting players move throughout the world with a node-base locomotion system which, crucially, doesn’t rely on teleportation. That’s music to my ears, as I’ve found over the years that teleportation locomotion in VR, while comfortable, tends not to be very immersive since there’s a visual disconnect from one position to the next, which makes the virtual world feel less real.
The locomotion system in Blood & Truth allows players to look at nodes scattered throughout the environment and press a button to glide toward them at a flat speed. Since you don’t need to think about how to navigate once you initiative a move to a new node, you’re free to continue to watch and engage enemies, whether by sneaking or by force.
But node-to-node isn’t the only way players will move through the world. There’s also situational locomotion. In my hands-on preview of one of the game’s levels, I was sneaking into a casino to find a bad guy and there was a moment where I shot the lock on a ladder to make it fall into position, and then used my hands on the rungs to pull myself up to the next level. Another part of the demo had me pull myself up into an air duct and then use my hands to pull myself through along its length to the other side. These, and I suspect even more moments of situational locomotion, are peppered throughout.
I found the locomotion in Blood & Truth not only comfortable but also immersive. Having the agency to choose where to go from a range of options—and sometimes even reaching out to grab onto the virtual world to help you move through it—makes the world feel much more real than the ‘frame-by-frame’ feeling of teleporting locomotion. And that sets a strong stage for the action, gameplay, and story.
About that… as I mentioned, I was sneaking into a casino to find a bad guy (sounds pretty generic, but this demo was part way through the game, so I’m sure there’s more to learn about the characters and story). I had a silenced pistol on a chest holster, along with some magazines.
After climbing up the ladder I’m confronted with a locked door. Handily, a little tool kit appears, from which I take a lock pick in each hand. Upon inserting the lock picks into the keyhole, I have to turn one into the ‘sweet spot’, and then tilt the other one down to pop the pins up one by one until the lock was opened.
Image courtesy Sony
After getting inside, I crawled my way through the air duct and popped out the other end to find a surveillance camera console which had a series of buttons and a joystick. Clicking the buttons would switch the monitor between various camera views, while I could grab the joystick to pan and tilt the view. This is how I located my target; a man named Keech. To get to him, I’d have to pass through the casino floor, which would put me in close proximity with armed guards. Good thing I have a gun.
I took an elevator down to the casino floor where the point-and-move locomotion allowed me to choose which cover points I wanted to move to, and I could stay hidden from the guards as long as I timed my movements carefully. As I moved throughout the casino, trying my best to evade the guards, there were several points presented to me where I could plant C4 charges. To do so I had to grab the detonator from a bag and stick it on top of the charge, then stick the charge in the right location. It wasn’t as interesting as the lock picking mechanic, but hey, anything is better than ‘Press X to place C4’.
Alas, one of the guards spotted my poorly-timed move and a gunfight ensued. I pulled out my silenced pistol and, looking down the reflex sight, blasted away at the enemies as we both took cover behind some blackjack tables. Throughout the fight I was able to move to various cover points by pointing and clicking, and I could also ‘strafe’ to points to my left and right without needing to look at them.
Image courtesy Sony
There were times where I looking around a pillar to try to find a new place to move which would make for a good flanking maneuver, but since there was no node I wasn’t able to move where I wanted. As much as this system improves agency of other types of VR locomotion, it should be insulated as much as possible from those sorts of ‘I want to but it won’t let me’ movements.
Shooting the enemies, which convincingly fell limp to the ground upon being dispatched, feels tight and impactful, and was punctuated by a clip-based reloading mechanic which has you remove a magazine from your chest-harness and slide it into the pistol.
With guards no longer standing between me and the elevator up to Keech’s room, I headed up to his floor and confronted him at the door. When he saw me, he began running down the hotel hallways, and the game automatically caused me to chase behind him. What ensued was another smart locomotion scheme which essentially combined on-rails shooting with occasional bouts of the prior node-based cover stuff.
The on-rails moments allowed me to not think so much about where I was going (since the game was guiding me), but allowed me to soak in all the action of blasting Keech’s goons who were attempting to stop me along the way. As the chase proceeded and I had to take out enemies popping around seemingly every corner and pillar, I noticed a fire extinguisher that was just begging to be shot. As I shot it, the world dropped into slow motion. I could see bullets, smoke, debris, and spent casings delicately dancing through the air. This Matrix moment made me feel like a total badass as I took out the room full of baddies with careful headshots (thanks to the enemies all kindly moving in slow motion for me).
At the end of the chase sequence I confronted Keech, and while his dialogue wasn’t entirely clear to me (since I don’t have the knowledge of the setup just yet), what was clear to me was how great the character looked. While the art style keeps the game’s visuals out of the uncanny valley, the motion-captured performance and excellent facial detail made for a deeply believable character.
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Through smart design in both locomotion and agency, Sony’s London Studio is clearly onto something with big potential. From shooting to exploring, I felt engaged with the world of Blood & Truth, which deeply solidified it in my head as a physical place around me. I began to forget about the Move controllers in my hands and instead thought about lock picking, C4 placement, and how many bullets were left in my magazine. Throughout it all, the Move’s limited tracking performance didn’t once rear its head (and issue I’ve had with other PSVR titles). The real world begins to fade away; immersion takes over. This is what VR is for.
The studio isn’t yet talking about a release date (though at this point it would seem 2018 is a safe bet) or price, but this is definitely one to keep your eye on.
Das interne Sony-Studio in London hinter Blood & Truth hat bereits die Virtual-Reality-Demo PlayStation VR Worlds entwickelt. Besonders The London Heist konnte Spieler überzeugen. Nun hat Sonyin Paris ein neues Spiel aus dem Studio angekündigt: In Blood & Truth taucht man in die Londoner Unterwelt ab und muss sich als Elite-Soldat Ryan Marks mit kriminellen Kräften auseinandersetzen. In einem Blogbeitrag sowie im Video erklären die Entwickler die Hintergründe.
Blood & Truth: Blockbuster-Action für PSVR
Das Spiel Blood & Truth ist praktisch der Nachfolger von The London Heist, soll aber ein vollwertiges Spiel werden und legt den Fokus etwas anders. Für die Entwickler war die Demo ein Liebesbrief an die klassischen London-East-End-Gangster-Filme, während Blood & Truth sich am Action-Genre orientiert. Es soll große dramatische Momente geben und ein Setting, das an Blockbuster-Filme erinnert.
Besonders stolz ist der ehemalige Entwickler im Lionhead StudioStuart Whyte auf den Soundtrack des Spiels. Dieser fühlt sich in Klassik und dem Genre Grime zu Hause – der Musikstil Grime enstand im Londoner Eastend und mischt elektronische Musik, Hip-Hop und DubStep. Wie The London Heist spielt auch Blood & Truth in Englands Hauptstadt. Als Soldat Ryan Marks begebt ihr euch auf eine gefährliche Mission, um die Familie vor einem rücksichtslosen Bandenchef zu retten. Neben der Action spielen Dialog-Auswahlen eine große Rolle, mit der man den Charakter des Protagonisten formen kann. Einen genauen Veröffentlichungstermin nennen die Entwickler noch nicht, versprechen aber in den nächsten Monaten viele Neuigkeiten zu dem Spiel.
Sony London Studio has today revealed its latest PlayStation VR title, Blood & Truth, as part of the Paris Games Week press conference hosted by Sony Interactive Entertainment Europe (SIEE). A spiritual successor to one of PlayStation VR Worlds’ most popular experiential titles, The London Heist, Blood & Truth is currently expected to launch in 2018.
Casting the player as Ryan Marks, Blood & Truth is a brutal gangster experience set in London. After laving London for a stint in the army, Marks has returned to find his family has been murdered. Out for revenge, Marks’ quest will take him through the city’s seedy underbelly, breaking and entering his way into enemy hideouts, casinos and all manner of mayhem.
Played from a first-person perspective, Blood & Truth has been shown to feature both action sequences and stealth. Players will dual wield pistols and automatic weapons as they gun down enemies as well as finding secret routes and picking locks in order to gain entry to enemy hideouts. Furthermore, the infamous interrogation scene from The London Heist now appears to have been turned on its head, with the player now in control of the intimidation.
The debut trailer for Blood & Truth, featured below, shows an impressive amount of environmental detail. From smashing bottles and shattered windows, to falling lighting rigs and bomb detonation destroying entire rooms, Blood & Truth has obviously benefited from the additional year of PlayStation VR development experienced by the team at Sony London Studio.
Some time ago VRFocus reported on the fact Sony London Studios’ The Heist had been in development as a standalone title. While that project launched as part of the PlayStation VR Worlds package, it’s very possible that Blood & Truth is the fruit of that extended development.
Blood & Truth will be exclusive to PlayStation VR and will require two PlayStation Move motion controllers to play. No specific release date has yet been announced for the videogame, but the debut trailer follows below. VRFocus will keep you updated with all the latest details on Blood & Truth and other forthcoming first-party PlayStation VR titles.
Sony debuted a trailer for Blood & Truth, an upcoming game from Sony’s London Studio for PlayStation VR.
The game shows a gun-fueled assault on what looks like a casino and nightclub in London. The player is shown hiding behind walls for cover and crawling through air ducts using the PlayStation Move controllers to wiggle along. The trailer also shows what appears to be aggressive interrogation using gunfire to scare someone, as well as gun fights enhanced with slow motion.
Trailer below:
The first generation of VR shooting games often focused on battling robots or zombies, but as the market progresses more developers are becoming comfortable with the idea of shooting virtual humans while immersed in a VR headset, with Blood & Truth becoming the latest example.
Casting the player as Ryan Marks, Blood & Truth is a brutal gangster experience set in London. After laving London for a stint in the army, Marks has returned to find his family has been murdered. Out for revenge, Marks’ quest will take him through the city’s seedy underbelly, breaking and entering his way into enemy hideouts, casinos and all manner of mayhem.
Blood & Truth will be exclusive to PlayStation VR and will require two PlayStation Move motion controllers to play. No specific release date has yet been announced for the videogame, but the debut trailer follows below. 