Insomniac Games as built a reputation for high quality virtual reality (VR) titles over the past few years, beginning with single-player experience Edge of Nowhere and then delving into eSports territory with The Unspoken. All Oculus Rift exclusives, a trend which may soon be coming to an end thanks to the studios’ acquisition by Sony Worldwide Studios. If that is the case then Insomniac Games will be leaving the headset behind with a bang, with its latest and most ambitious VR experience to date, Stormland.
Ambitious in every sense of the word, as Stormland offers a world that is fully explorable, interactive and ever changing; each week everything shifts to offer you even more enemies, challenges and reasons to venture out into the clouds.
Much like Asgard’s Wrath, Stormland feels like a VR videogame should, not only designed specifically for the medium but also lauding its attributes at every turn. You may be in an android body placed on a fantastical alien planet, but the sci-fi aspect soon falls away, leaving you with a world that is both hostile and inviting at the same time.
Stormland eases you into the experience so that new players shouldn’t feel overwhelmed while VR enthusiasts will naturally get to grips with the control system. Just like any role-playing game (RPG) the various core functions of your android body aren’t available straight away, with abilities like flying, climbing and more nicely staggered so that once they are all attached their operation is seamless.
This is a really important factor in the gameplay. Insomniac has created a world which is almost completely explorable. Stormland is split into three main cloud areas as well as a hub location. These three levels offer an expanse of cloud which is dotted with floating islands. Any of these islands can be reached and investigated, flying to each one by simply stepping into the clouds and putting your arms forward to fly – Superman style. These aren’t some flat desolate lands either. Most offer massive cliffs to assail, great for finding useful items as well as choice sniping spots.
Climbing is a vital component of Stormland, and it works a treat. You don’t even need to be directly next to a surface either (this is sci-fi). You’re equipped with a gripping mechanism that can attach from a meter or so away, handy if you miss time a jump. The system also allows you to fling yourself up like some freeclimbing daredevil, making short work of any building or cliff. There was one little aspect that was a bit odd, not being able to grab a hip weapon whilst climbing.
This is a shooter after all, so guns are an important factor. Before delving into upgrades, you can store a gun on either hip. Try to sneakily kill an enemy by climbing a wall, popping your head over and shooting only works if the weapon is in your hand before starting the ascent, tricky (but not impossible) with one hand. It seems a weird oversight for such a well put together videogame.
As for the weapons there are a mixture of tried and tested designs. The SMG is the centre piece and all-rounder, as a lot of the enemies – called Tempest – wield them. Others available include a shotgun, rifle, sniper rifle, grenade launcher and minigun. Each has a standard firing mode when used with one hand while using two will improve the aim and recoil.
There’s no reloading in Stormland whatsoever. Instead, you have the option to refill ammo at a work bench or destroy weapons found in the field. Each gun has a point which can be grabbed to then rip it apart. This will then supply ammo for that, and only that, weapon. It’s an unusual mechanic which has the affect for making you plan each attack, as you can’t suddenly reload. When under heavy fire ripping a gun apart puts you in harms way a little to long for comfort as you can’t move for a moment. There’s a little issue with the minigun in this respect. When grabbing a gun with your second hand, this is mostly done underneath. The minigun has a handle on the top, which is very close to the point that let’s you pull it apart. This can then prove a little infuriating when engaging a Goliath robot in close proximity when try to avoid its incoming fire.
To begin with Stormland’s campaign will take most players around five or so hours to complete, depending on how thorough they are investigating every island. This does pay off as there are several crucial items that are needed to help upgrade both your body and arsenal. Minerals sprouting from the ground essentially work as cash, used at a work bench to buy ammo, better guns, new arms and grenades. Then there are the Aeon buds and biomaterial. Both improve your body, offering a substantial selection of options, not all of which can be equipped. As such, you’ll need to select what best suits your play style, better protection for a more gung-ho approach, or something a little more stealth like.
Options, options, options are the key to Stormland, and this continues after the main campaign is complete. Once finished the world sort of resets, with those three aforementioned levels completely changing. Heading back up you’ll find new challenges and islands to explore. The reset also applies to your body upgrades, gaining the usable matter back to spend again, switching things up and testing new mods. This isn’t a one time reset either, this happens once a week. Thus, giving Stormland a strong replay factor much like procedurally generated videogames.
There’s also the co-op mode to talk about. Not initially available until completion of an early side mission, you can have a friend drop in whenever they like. Insomniac Games as implemented the system in such a way that someone can easily join then leave without causing disruption to your experience. Having a mate join in then only improves things further.
If there was a reason to own an Oculus Rift and discount every other VR headset then Stormland is it. This is thanks to a combination of elements from the intuitive free-roaming, to the action-pack guns fights and the wealth of options available. Plus, the fact Stormland looks gorgeous, once atop a spire or cliff, looking out over the cloud covered vista is awe inspiring. Every Oculus Rift owner need this in their library, as Stormland could very well be the VR videogame of 2019.
With Stormland, Insomniac Games set out to figure out if an open-world adventure game could really work in VR. The result? Not just ‘the new bar’, but a rather high one at that (not to mention one of VR’s first great co-op games).
Developer: Insomniac Games Available On: Oculus (Rift) Reviewed On: Rift S, Rift CV1 Release Date: November 14th, 2019 Price: $40
Gameplay
Stormland is a VR open-world adventure game with a good deal of shooting, though I would stop shy of describing it as a ‘shooter’; while about half of your time will be filled with combat, the rest offers traversal, exploration, collection, and progression.
The game is fundamentally composed of several sizeable ‘Strata’ (you can think of these like map regions), each of which is peppered with islands of varying sizes. Between the islands is a landscape of clouds; when you step on the clouds you ‘Slipstream’, a very fast means of traversal compared to the stick-based locomotion that you’ll use when on land. While you’ll mostly be hanging out in a single Strata for large stretches at a time, you’ll progress from one to the other as you go, occasionally returning to ‘Base Camp’ (the lowest layer).
Stick-based locomotion and Slipstreaming are complimented very well with a climbing and gliding ability. You can pretty much climb anything at any time, and you’ll glide around whenever you wind up in the air. As you get skilled with using these different locomotion tools, you’ll be able to move around with an incredible feeling of freedom.
Insomniac’s decision to allow players to Slipstream when traveling between islands is quite genius. It effectively ‘shrinks’ the map, allowing the space to feel quite massive without burdening players with trudging from A to B with nothing interesting to do; Slipstreaming is itself the interesting thing to do between A and B, and it’s actually quite fun.
When you aren’t cruising the clouds, you’ll looking for valuable resources or laying the hurt on enemy androids using a reasonably sized arsenal which gets more powerful over time. Combat is well paced, pitting you against just a handful of more challenging enemies at a time (rather than heaps of fodder).
While the soldier-sized androids come in a few different flavors, the tactics you’ll use against them are mostly the same. Thankfully, flying drones, leaping snipers, static turrets, and hulking goliaths mix things up enough for combat to stay fresh and challenging, with a sense of reward for picking the right strategy for the situation. That said, enemy AI can feel pretty dumb and unaware at times (especially if you’re picking them off from afar).
Killing enemies in Stormland is a very satisfying affair thanks to well placed effects and sounds that really sell the destruction. After 10 hours in the game I was still enjoying the thrill of disintegrating an enemy android with a double-shotgun blast to the face.
It’s a good thing then that the game gives you tons of freedom regarding which weapons you use and the combat tactics you employ. ‘Workbenches’ scattered throughout the game allow you to fabricate any weapon that you’ve discovered in the world, as well as grenades, health canisters, and more. All weapons can be used with one hand, but gripping with two hands adds an extra benefit like increased rate of fire, stability, etc. I came to prefer carrying an SMG, shotgun, and sniper rifle with me as my usual kit, and then improvising as needed by snatching other weapons from dispatched foes.
Image courtesy Insomniac Games
Stormland’s weapons don’t reload in the traditional sense. Rather than inserting a new magazine, weapons are actually ‘disposable’ by grabbing them with both hands and ripping them apart. This gives you both Alloy (the currency which you spend at Workbenches) and some ammo for that gun type. While magazine-based reloading can be a lot of fun in VR games, I think Insomniac made an excellent choice with Stormland’s weapon design in this regard; the gesture of tearing guns apart is an absolute joy, and this also means that even if you find a gun you don’t care for (which happens often) it’s still useful to you because it can be turned into Alloy and ammo. Insomniac clearly recognized the fun of this ripping/tearing gesture, as you’ll see it used in other places throughout the game (and surely, it will be picked up for use in other VR games too)
Alloy can also be found growing throughout the world of Stormland; you’ll shoot your hand laser at it to knock it free and see if vacuumed up into your inventory. Beyond Alloy, you’ll also want to snatch up any bio-fruit and Aeon Buds that you find. Bio-fruit recharges your special ability (things like invisibility or a stun gun), while Aeon Buds are a rare plant-based commodity which is important for upgrading your abilities.
Between scrapping enemy weapons, collecting the game’s various useful resources, and working toward whatever mission objective you’re on, Stormland makes it feel like there’s always something to do, be it around the corner, on the next island, or in the next Strata.
The game moves you along with a serviceable, but largely uneventful string of story missions which effectively introduce you to the fundamental workings of the game in preparation for the ‘Cycling World’.
After you complete the core story missions, you’ll be let loose to go tackle the Terminus in the Cycling World. The Cycling World is the state of the game’s Strata or regions; it’s identical for all players of the game and gets remixed once every calendar week. In the Cycling World you’ll be presented with a handful of missions in each Strata (similar to those found in the core story missions) and battle your way to the Terminus, the game’s highest and most challenging Strata. When the Cycling World turns over it brings new and rearranged islands, different missions, and new locations for enemies, objectives, resources, and more.
Conquering the Terminus will put your skills to the test, including understanding how to read your map and complete mission objectives which are not always easy to find. When you head to the Terminus you’ll want to make sure you’ve upgraded your skills and bring a full arsenal of upgraded weapons, grenades, health canisters, and the arm-skill of your choice.
Defeating the Terminus unfortunately doesn’t offer much of a sense of climax for the game (aside from being a fun challenge), but when the Cycling World turns over, you’ll be presented with remixed Strata and a new Terminus to defeat. If you beat the Terminus in the prior cycle, the next one will be even more challenging. In this way, Insomniac hopes that the Cycling World will create a sense of ongoing replayability for Stormland, while the escalating difficulty of the Terminus will amount to a bit of ‘end game’ challenge for players to dig into.
It took me about 9 hours from the start of the game to defeat the Terminus for the first time; because the Cycling World turns over only once per week, it’ll be a while yet before we know what kind of long-term replayability the game will have. Thankfully, even if you only battle your way to the Terminus once, Stormland is a compelling experience and a true framework for VR open-world adventure games.
Image courtesy Insomniac Games
The cherry on top is Stormland’s two-player co-op. Although player-to-player interactions (like handing each other objects) need much more attention, the ability to traverse a huge continuous world with a friend is a joy. It’s really fun to be standing atop a high vista, see something interesting in the distance, and tell your friend ‘hey let’s go over there’, before leaping to the clouds and racing to the other side of the map. Because the game offers a strong element of freedom with regards to weapons and tactics, it’s also fun to collectively strategize by picking complementary loadouts.
Stormland on Original Rift CV1
While the majority of my time was spent in Rift S, I played about two hours of Stormland on the original Rift CV1 and found that it fared nearly as well as the Rift S. While the game is easier to play with 360 tracking, as long as you are adept at maintaining facing the front of your playspace (or if you have a 360 sensor setup with your CV1), you ought to be able to get just as much enjoyment out of the game.
Immersion
Image courtesy Insomniac Games
Stormland is a good-looking game which is occasionally downright gorgeous. While the islands that you’ll find yourself exploring are flush with flora and interesting terrain, it’s the cloudtop vistas that really bring out the ‘wow’ moments. Each Strata has a unique feeling which is deeply influenced by their strikingly different lighting conditions. Finding yourself up on a high vista, overlooking distant islands, and seeing the sun catch the clouds just right is only made more special by virtue of knowing that you can go out and travel to any of the islands you see before you.
The gentle onset of a spontaneous rainstorms brings with it a sense that the world is indeed living rather than static. These moments of beauty are unfortunately juxtaposed by some rough edges found elsewhere.
Early in the game you will receive the ‘Scanner’, a visor upgrade which basically highlights anything interactive or threatening within a certain radius. It feels like a cheap hack (in place of more thoughtful art direction and visual affordances) to help players locate useful stuff in the environment and to spot enemies among dense plant life.
Turning on the visor crowds your field of view with HUD elements while also highlighting seemingly half the world in front of you, no matter if it’s through a wall or not. This essentially collapses your sense of occlusion (which is closely tied to stereo-depth), while introducing tons of excess visual noise which makes it difficult to sort out what information is important rather than extraneous. In the middle of a gunfight, for instance, it’s all too easy to lose sight of your laser reticle amidst all the visual chaos. You can turn the scanner on and off at will (and believe me, I left it off as often as I could), but it is unfortunately essential to spotting enemies and finding key objectives.
This excess use of the visual channel is part of a broader trend. Both audio and haptics are also frequently abused with extraneous feedback that’s difficult to decipher among the mass of incoming information. ‘What did I just hear?’, ‘Who is shooting at me?’, and ‘Why does my hand seem to buzz randomly?’ were frequent questions on my mind as I played.
That’s an unfortunate sore spot in a game which is otherwise incredibly thoughtful and borderline groundbreaking in its VR design.
I could write an entire article on Stormland’s smart VR design (yes, even beyond this one), but to keep this review concise, I’ll slipstream through a few highlights.
For one, the game presents an entirely spatial interface to the player. It isn’t perfect, but it’s a huge step forward compared to the laser-pointer interfaces seen in so many other games. Interface elements are generally laid out as virtual touchscreens, including a spatialized map which has an ‘augmented reality’ style view where a 3D representation floats right there in space for you to look at. This is a good foundation, but another pass on usability (especially for left-handed players) would be welcome.
Second, Stormland has a fully spatialized inventory system. Once fully unlocked, you’ll have two hip holsters, two shoulder holsters, and three chest slots (for grenades and energy canisters). While this is steadily becoming par for the course, it’s the details that matter; the game actively prevents you from dropping anything that you’ve holstered. If you accidentally drop your gun in the middle of a firefight, it will levitate in front of you for a moment before flying back to your holster. The same thing applies to grenades and other items. This simple but effective system goes such a long way to de-clunking the moment-to-moment VR experience.
Third, interactions feel great. I already talked about ripping guns apart to collect Alloy. This satisfaction carries through to most things in the game, like harvesting fruit by grabbing it and then crushing it in your hand, activating grenades by pressing a button on top, grabbing levers, and activating elevators. It feels good because Insomniac spent a lot of time figuring out how to intuit what the player is trying to do and then helping them do it while making it look reasonably good (we got a behind-the-scenes look at that in this piece). While this occasionally goes awry (like when the game sometimes thinks you want to grab your weapon instead of grab for a climbing hold), it’s generally a positive for how the game plays and feels.
A quick minor point: I would have loved to see both a flashlight and binoculars in Stormland.
Comfort
Image courtesy Insomniac Games
Though Stormland does an impressive job of maintaining player comfort, it has tons of artificial movement; very sensitive players should tread with caution, but, I would say it’s still worth a shot (you can always return the game under Oculus’ reasonable refund policy).
For how much movement is in the game, I was surprised to find that I was mostly comfortable throughout. You have some freedom (and settings) to steer clear of things that might make you nauseous. For instance, I typically opted not to sprint or strafe too much when using the thumbstick because that can sometimes get to me. Somehow speedy Slipstreaming and even flying at high speeds through the air remained perfectly comfortable for me, as did climbing and even flinging myself around while climbing.
Comfort options include head or hand-based direction of movement, snap or smooth turning, vignetting, HUD distance, and a few others. There’s an option to play seated (which adjusts your height), though with the extensive use of hip-holsters and the frequent need to crane your neck upward to climb overhead terrain, it isn’t a great experience.
In addition to crowding your visual field, the game’s HUD elements are often placed so far in your periphery that they are too blurry to read. Similarly, items stored on your chest are often quite difficult to see (this was worse on Rift S than Rift CV1) because of how far down you need look and the limits of the FOV.
Stormland Performance
Insomniac told us that the game was still undergoing optimizations ahead of launch; the build we were provided for review struggled to maintain smooth framerate on the Ultra at times, even on a GTX 2080 Ti and Core i7-6700K. While ASW smoothed over most of this, stuttering could be seen occasionally. I opted to turn settings down one notch from Ultra to High to reduce instance of bad performance, but even that didn’t make it perfectly smooth. Settings go lower still, but the game rapidly loses visual fidelity. We’ll take another look at the launch build to see if additional optimizations make a difference.
Insomniac Games is no stranger to VR game development. Since 2016 the studio has created three Oculus exclusive VR titles—Feral Rites, Edge of Nowhere, and The Unspoken—but its next (and possibly last Oculus exclusive), Stormland, is unequivocally its most ambitious VR production yet. Stormland rewrites the rules about what a VR game can be by synthesizing & expanding many of the important lessons that Insomniac (and the industry at large) has learned about making compelling VR experiences in the years since first-gen consumer headsets hit the market. We spoke to the Lead & Principal Designers of Stormland, Mike Daly and Duncan Moore, to learn how they pulled it all together to create one of VR’s first truly native open-world games.
Editor’s Note: The exclusive artwork peppered throughout this article is best viewed on a desktop browser with a large screen or in landscape orientation on your phone. All images courtesy Insomniac Games; special thanks to artist Darren Quach.
Built to Move
While it was entirely normal and useful, in non-VR games, to grab the camera and swing it about the game environment as needed, in VR the camera is the player’s head, and moving it around jarringly is a recipe for discomfort and nausea. Even moving virtually with a joystick from A to B can be uncomfortable in VR if special care isn’t taken.
In the early days of VR, the common refrain was to simply never move players virtually to ensure comfort. This led to VR’s (mostly derided) ‘wave shooter era’. These games, even if they were otherwise compelling, lacked something core to most non-VR games—the ability to seamlessly traverse large and varied environments.
Since then, VR developers have discovered a handful of methods to comfortably move players. But locomotion is so intricately interwoven with game design that the best VR games tend to be those which think of locomotion as a piece of the gameplay itself, not just a necessary conceit. Stormland, as you may have gathered by now, is one of those games in which locomotion is clearly part of the gameplay. And this is by no accident, says Stormland’s Principal Designer, Duncan Moore.
“Locomotion has always been in the core DNA of Stormland. Primarily because fun traversal mechanics are close to our heart at Insomniac. From the grind rails of Ratchet & Clank, to the wild city-hopping acrobatics of Sunset Overdrive, we at Insomniac know how powerful traversal mechanics can be. If done right, they create a great foundation of sticky gameplay that’s all about feel and feedback. Everybody understands the thrill of moving through space—it’s simple, relatable fun that connects to the kid in all of us,” said Moore. “From the very inception of Stormland, we knew we wanted players to slipstream across the clouds, jump, and glide in an open world setting. It’s one of the very first things we proved to ourselves and [Oculus Studios, Stormland’s publisher] when we started exploring the game. The big question from the very start was; can we pull off locomotion that is thrilling and free but also comfortable enough for VR?”
Moore said that the studio knew from its experience on prior VR titles that players were are more comfortable in VR if movement is tied to broad and relatable body motions, like hand and arm movements, rather than buttons or sticks.
“This is where we started with our first prototype of slipstreaming [zooming across the clouds] and gliding [flying through the air]. We found that mapping speed and strafing to hand position worked pretty well and was relatable. We kind of mashed up the ideas of superhero flight with surfing. While gliding across the clouds, you can reach your hands forward to speed up and pull them into your body to slow down. To change direction, you simply drift your hand input left and right to steer where you want to go. It ended up working well from the very start—we knew very early on that this was the direction for us.”
And though slipstreaming and gliding worked well enough to become a significant component of the game, it was climbing that really broadened the possibilities Moore explained.
“Everyone at the office loved VR climbing games and we knew this would be a great fit for open-world exploration. We didn’t know how big of a feature this would be at first, but once we got it in it changed everything! At first we planned to restrict climbing to certain surfaces, but after some experimentation we realized that free climbing on any surface suited our game vision perfectly,” he said. “Grabbing and climbing anything was a big revelation. That is, to be able to grasp any surface and grapple up it or grab it and fling yourself any direction. You are connecting your real hand to this virtual environment and moving yourself around in a very analogue, playful way. This is what VR can do that [no other medium] can! It immediately felt special.”
Moore recalled how central these mechanics became to the rest of the gameplay in a way that simply wouldn’t have worked if locomotion hadn’t been carefully considered from the outset.
“Committing to these mechanics early on set the direction for the rest of the game—it was the kind of bold decision that we needed to put traversal mechanics front and center. Our whole game is built from the notion that you can slipstream, climb, and glide almost everywhere in the open world. It affected every aspect of the game design and presented a mountain of challenges for us to solve, but it was totally worth it. It’s at the very heart of what makes Stormland so thrilling to experience.”
Insomniac Games will be releasing what could quite possibly be its last virtual reality (VR) title for Oculus Rift in a couple of weeks, Stormland, and it looks set to be one of the biggest VR launches of 2019. Last week the studio released the first in a three-part video series showcasing the videogame in more detail. Today, the second part has arrived.
This next trailer takes a much more in-depth look at some of the combat in Stormland whilst two new enemies make an appearance. Some of the content has been shown before like the guns, using containers as cover and pulling the power cells out of enemies to disable them.
Stormland will have a variety of hostiles to deal with, from Sentinels and snipers to flying drones and missile launchers. Those two new ones, well they’re the Blitz Troopers and Goliath Troopers. The latter is so far the biggest unit shown, a big brute of a machine which can form barriers to protect itself and other troops. It’s unclear whether these just need a tremendous amount of firepower to take down or if there are other options available.
That’s one area Stormland seems to have very well covered, options. As previously reported, Insomniac Games wanted to give players the option to free-roam no matter the environment. This meant making every surface climbable rather just in specific areas. In turn, this opens up the strategic possibilities when dealing with multiple hostile forces. There’s also the deadly fauna to consider as well.
Insomniac Games’ Lead VFX Artist Yancy Young shared a few more details on Oculus Blog, commenting: “We have a really cool array of enemy types from short-range Assault Troopers that can close the distance with shotguns, to long-range sniper enemies that blend into the world. The situation when approaching Tempest enemies both in and out of their strongholds is not always what it seems. Players will need to use all of their robotic senses to ensure they’re ready when the bullets start to fly!”
Stormland will be an Oculus Rift/Rift S exclusive when it launches on 14th November. Don’t forget that if you own an Oculus Quest you’ll also be able to play Stormland once Oculus Link has been rolled out. The third video should be arriving next week, when that happens VRFocus will let you know.
Stormland, Insomniac Games’ upcoming Rift exclusive, is gearing up for launch on November 14th. Along the way, Oculus and Insomniac are throwing out weekly reveals that give us a closer look at what awaits. Last week’s teaser was all about weekly missions and content reveals, while this week’s focuses in on the game’s enemies (both big and small) and its undeniably cool-looking combat.
In the video, we get a look at number of the game’s enemy types, including flying drone swarms, scouts, snipers, sentinels, missile launchers, and two enemy types that thus far haven’t been named: ‘Blitz Troopers’ and the aptly named ‘Goliath Troopers’.
As we’ve seen in our previous trailers, some enemies can be taken down in either conventional ways (pew pew), or by deftly robbing them of their battery canisters. We’re hoping these sorts of avenues for creative tactics are available on other enemies too, but since we’ve never actually had a chance to fight any larger enemies in the demos we’ve played, we simply can’t say.
What we have seen in a trailer released back in August is a pretty rich combat system though, which emphasizes the diverse tactics available to players, such as environmental and ability-based stealth, high maneuverability with smaller weapons, and the head-on approach supported by heavy weaponry.
The studio will be releasing more teaser clips leading up to the November 14th launch. At this point, it feels like we’ve seen a pretty big chunk of the gameplay, and we’re hoping Insomniac has more to peel back over the next two weeks.
Stormland is the next game from Insomniac Games and it’s due out this November. We spoke with the Lead Designer about co-op, game progression, and end-game content back at OC6.
Stormland, the upcoming Oculus exclusive from Insomniac Games, is headed to the Rift platform on November 14th. In preparation for the big day, Insomniac has released a new video showing off the first-person VR adventure’s ongoing content, which promises to mix up the world with weekly reveals of new challenges and environments.
The game, which boasts both single-player and drop-in / drop-out co-op for two players, apparently will feature a number of biomes to explore, including old-growth forests, deserts, rain forests, alien mushroom biomes, and volcanic areas—all of it dotted with human-made technology left to decay in their mysterious absence.
The video teases some of this ongoing content, saying that rewards can be had by scanning the environment for clues, hunting down enemy commanders, breaking into secure vaults, or looking for a cure for someone or something called ‘NYX’ (Nicks?).
According to an Oculus blog post, the studio will be releasing more teaser clips leading up to the November 14th launch, so we’re sure to learn more then.
We’re not far off from the November 14 release date for Insomniac Games’ Rift-exclusive title Stormland. To build up the hype, Oculus Studios and Insomniac Games are releasing a new “Mission Log” video and developer Q&A every week until release.
This week’s mission log video is embedded above, and the developer Q&A is with Insomniac’s Principal Designer Duncan Moore, which you can read here.
One of the more interesting tidbits from the interview is the sections on the open-world climbing mechanic, which lets you climb on any surface in the game, unrestricted.
“Having the ability to freely explore the world—using your body to climb and traverse both feels natural and empowering,” said Moore. “Seeing your full body animating and moving with you locks you into that character in a way many other VR games aren’t achieving.”
Initially, the climbing was restricted to certain designated areas only, but the team decided to take the reins off and let players climb on any surface in Stormland. “Some were skeptical at first, because this is a big deal and really affects the way you design and construct the whole world. We decided to take on the design challenge and went for it—we felt it was a perfect fit for VR and really made a bold statement about the open-world nature of our game.”
We’ve got a wealth of Stormland content for you to catch up on before the game releases in three weeks. You can read our co-op multiplayer hands-on from last month here, as well as our initial hands-on with the game all the way back in September 2018. We also recently published an interview with Tim Salvitti, (also embedded above) Senior Community Developer at Insomniac Games, about Stormland’s story, its inspiration and the expansive gameplay.
There are three weeks to go until Insomniac Games launches its next virtual reality (VR) title for Oculus Rift and its a biggie, Stormland. If you’re not already engrossed in Asgard’s Wrath then this sci-fi epic might be what you’re waiting for, and today the studio has released the first part of a new video series, Stormland: Sypher Mission Log – Part 1.
Mixing both gameplay and cinematic scenes the video briefs you on part of Stormland’s storyline, explaining that the world is in flux, altering itself every seven days. If you’ve been closely following Stormland then you’ll know you play as a robot, a gardener of sorts who needs to save both them as well as their friends whilst trying to find out what happened to all the humans.
The trailer is the first time Insomniac Games has delved into the planet, revealing the environments are split over three strata which you have to ascend. Each just as deadly and dense as the last, there will be robotic enemies to deal with plus some deadly fauna to catch you off guard.
Alongside the new trailer, Insomniac Games’ Principal Designer Duncan Moore also spoke with Oculus Blog about the upcoming adventure, saying: “We wanted to do big things with Stormland—things that had never been done before in VR.
“One of the most memorable things was pushing for open-world climbing in VR. We both wanted to see how it would feel to take off the reins and let players climb on any surface … it was an exciting change!”
This open-world experience does have to be experienced on your own either. The studio has implemented drop in and out co-op gameplay so a mate can come along for some or all of the ride. Both players then have complete freedom to run, climb and fly across the expansive terrain, completing challenges and helping each other out when a tough enemy comes along.
Stormland is an Oculus Rift/Rift S exclusive set to launch on 14th November. But as the company announced at Oculus Connect 6 (OC6), Oculus Link will also arrive for Oculus Quest next month, allowing the standalone headset to play Stormland. In fact, the title was used to showcase the new feature during OC6. VRFocus will continue its coverage of Stormland, reporting back with further updates.
Shuhei Yoshida, President of Sony Worldwide Studios, talked about the challenges of VR and reflected on what developers have learnt over the last three years.
“I think that the hardware experience will improve the VR experience. VR has a lot to learn even at companies that have been making games for a long time. I realized that as soon as I started VR. I had to learn a lot because I couldn’t do it with normal TV games. But we had to have many guidelines for danger, but with the developer’s ingenuity, we were able to see how to do it. VR makes us think about what the human abilities are and [after] 3 years, such knowledge is growing.”
In the same interview, Yoshida also mentioned that Asian developers could potentially join Sony Worldwide Studios in the future, and collaborate with developers in the US and Europe to create games for the Asian market. It remains to be seen whether this includes PSVR titles, though the potential is definitely there.
Ambitious in every sense of the word, as Stormland offers a world that is fully explorable, interactive and ever changing; each week everything shifts to offer you even more enemies, challenges and reasons to venture out into the clouds.
