New Trailer Goes Behind the Scenes of The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners

Hopefully, zombie fans still love The Walking Dead as not one but two virtual reality (VR) titles are coming soon. Survios is currently working on The Walking Dead Onslaught while Skydance Interactive is currently producing The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners. The latter received updated details last month and today the studio has released a behind-the-scenes video showcasing the setting, New Orleans. 

The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners

The video is the first in a series detailing development on The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners, with the team keen to discuss to richness and attention to the finer details. Featuring a unique story set in The Walking Dead universe, New Orleans is a cityscape in turmoil, not only from the walkers but the living inhabitants as well.

Skydance Interactive’s Art Director Jake Geiger mentions that the environment artists were encouraged to make sure each room told a story, rather than being some generic space filled with rubbish. So as you step into each location there will be hints at its previous existence, a child’s bedroom with hand-drawn pictures on the wall or a home which was broken into.

These environments cover a wide degree of everyday locations that you would expect to see trying to survive in a city. From wandering around the suburbs to schools, cemeteries and stores, each has been designed to perfectly echo the look and feel of the American south.

The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners

Just like the TV show it’s based on, The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners is a fight for survival, where players have to deal with the constant threats of violence, disease, and famine. Each decision is as crucial as the last, deciding who lives and who dies, whether to protect friends as well as foes. Not every enemy is a walker. And as some of the images release showcase, that combat is going to be brutal, with plenty of melee action.

Skydance Interactive has yet to confirm which headsets The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners will be coming to and whether it’ll be a purely single-player experience or have a co-op option. One piece of information has been confirmed and that’s the launch date, coming 23rd January 2020. VRFocus will continue its coverage of The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners reporting back with further progress updates.

The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners to see Early 2020 Release

Just over a year ago Skydance Interactive (Archangel: Hellfire) and Skybound Entertainment announced work on an official virtual reality (VR) version of AMC’s The Walking Dead, which just so happens to be called The Walking Dead: Saints & SinnersInitially due for release in 2019, nothing has been heard of the title until today, with a launch now pushed into 2020 and the first trailer appearing. 

The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners

This debut trailer offers a cinematic starting point to the storyline in The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners. Players step into the flooded remains of New Orleans, where they’re given the freedom to make their own storyline decisions as well as what they carry with them.

Naturally, The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners is a fight for survival against walkers, but also the constant threats of violence, disease, and famine. New Orleans is a city at war, with the living battling both the undead and each other. Players will have to make choices over who lives and dies, affecting the narrative. That can be protecting those in need, joining one of the warring factions, or playing them against each other for personal gain.

No zombie survival experience would be complete without some sort of arsenal and The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners will offer quite the assortment. From melee weapons like spiked baseball bats and machetes to bows and long-range firearms, crafting stations will be available so players can properly equip themselves before heading out.

The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners

The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners will also be a very visceral experience with physics-based combat allowing players to decapitate walkers, even getting blades stuck in heads which need to be wiggled out. Just like in the TV series, players will be able to grab zombies to enact even more bloodshed.

The teams plan on releasing The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners on 23rd January 2020. Currently, there’s been no mention of which headsets the videogame will support.

Fans of the series won’t just have The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners to look forward to. Survios is making The Walking Dead Onslaught which has similar combat features to Saints & Sinners. Onslaught currently has a Fall 2019 release window. As further details on The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners are released, VRFocus will let you know.

Take on Skynet When Terminator VR Comes to VR Entertainment Centres

Location-based virtual reality (VR) company SPACES and Skydance Media have announced the creation of a new attraction based on the popular Terminator movie franchise. 

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Having developed the Terminator VR experience for several months SPACES has said that guests will be able to join the Resistance, infiltrate Skynet, destroy Terminators, and hopefully save humanity in this theme park style adventure.

“SPACES has been delivering immersive VR experiences for years,“ notes Chris Hewish, EVP Interactive for Skydance Media. “When we experienced how they brought the Terminator world to life with their unique brand of multi-sensory VR, we knew this was something that would blow people’s minds. Now fans won’t just watch a story unfold in front of them, they will participate in one.”

To begin with the VR experience will come to a few select locations in the US, with SPACES preparing to announce these locations soon. In preparation for Terminator VR a small number of fans will have the chance to receive an exclusive behind-the-scenes sneak peek inside the Terminator universe, physically entering the world of the movie at an “undisclosed”, secret SPACES location. To be in with a shot all you need to do is apply at Spaces.com.

Terminator Genisys

“After developing and perfecting the Terminator VR experience, we can’t wait to share this with the world,” says Shiraz Akmal, SPACES’ CEO. “We build SPACES attractions to be limitless, fantastical experiences, allowing people to Go Anywhere Do Anything™. We’re going to issue a small number of special invitations to registered fans across the globe to ‘join the resistance’.”

“We want to push the boundaries of what’s possible with entertainment,” says Brad Herman, SPACES’ CTO. “We build SPACES attractions with the goal of taking guests on adventures with friends that they will never forget. With Terminator, our team of industry veterans has created a special blend of physical props, dynamic movement, and environmental effects for a social experience that fans will not only love but will want to experience again and again.”

In addition to Terminator VR, SPACES are currently working on several other experiences based on existing and original IP, that will be installed in theme-parks and retail locations around the world in the future. For further updates from SPACES, keep reading VRFocus.

Tencent Holdings Makes Strategic Investment in Skydance Media

Skydance Media is a company that has its fingers in plenty of pies. Not content with specialising simply on traditional or interactive entertainment, Skydance produces content for television, cinema, interactive media platforms and of course, virtual reality (VR). Skydance’s success hasn’t gone unnoticed either, as Tencent Holdings, a leading provider of online services in China and Asia, have now made a strategic investment in Skydance Media, hoping the expertise of the two companies will result in better visibility for Skydance products in Asia, as well as some healthy returns for Tencent too, naturally.

Tencent have been busy investing in a variety of media companies, including videogame development studios. Last year we saw Tencent make a bold investment in Milky Tea, a UK studio. Before even that Tencent decided to put their faith in yet another UK developer, when Cambridge based Frontier Developments received £17.7 million (GBP).

The new partnership between Tencent and Skydance will give Tencent the opportunity to co-dinance Skydance productions, as well as market and distribute the content and merchandise in China. Right now the focus is on upcoming Skydance films, including Mission: Impossible, Gemini Man, Terminator and two animated movies, Luck and Split. The productions have big names such as Tom Cruise, Will Smith, Ang Lee and James Cameron attached, so it’s already a promising start to the partnership.

David Ellison is founder and chief executive officer of Skydance Media, and speaks about the company’s expansion since 2010, and their bright future; “We are thrilled and honored to be entering into a strategic partnership with Tencent, whose global reach and position within the Chinese marketplace is truly unmatched. Skydance has experienced a tremendous amount of growth since our inception in 2010, and we’re excited that our next phase of expansion will be in partnership with a company that shares our vision for where entertainment is heading.”

Tencent’s own James Mitchell, chief strategy officer, also feels like the new partnership will mean great things in the Chinese market; “Skydance is nurturing successful entertainment franchises, especially in the action and science fiction genres, which are particularly popular in China. We believe this partnership will support Skydance’s expansion internationally, across media and into television production, and provide Tencent with attractive content that we can share with China consumers.”

Skydance also develop VR videogames and software, which no doubt was yet another factor which led Tencent to invest in the company. We interviewed Skydance on their ambitious Archangel project.

The future looks bright for Skydance as it seems a much wider audience will have access to their content in the future, and Tencent are surely pleased with the rights to publishing a variety of content for strong, recognisable licenses. For all of the latest business developments happening with VR studios on a global scale, make sure to keep reading VRFocus.