To say the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) 2017 has had a great showing of PlayStation VR games would an understatement. We saw loads of fantastic virtual reality (VR) titles, including two more from Until Dawn developers Supermassive Games, who brought this fascinating trailer for The Inpatient.
The Inpatient is a PlayStation VR exclusive, set 60 years before the events of Until Dawn inside The Sanatorium before it falls into disrepair. The player will have to interact with patients and staff inside the Sanatorium to discover their motivations and character story arcs, slowly uncovering the mysteries of your amnesiac protagonist, and the Sanatorium’s owner.
The Inpatient’s director, Nick Bowen, has shared his excitement for the title; “With The Inpatient, we used psychological horror themes to infiltrate the player’s subconscious and draw them further into the story. Our team spent a lot of time working to create a sense of isolation and fear, making extensive use of immersive 3D binaural audio to complement the amazing visuals and further transport them into their unfamiliar new home.”
The psychological horror VR experience was written with Until Dawn’s scriptwriters, Larry Fessenden and Graham Reznick to keep the videogame’s story and lore accurate.
Take a look at The Inpatient’s trailer below for everything you need to know about the PlayStation VR exclusive.
For all the latest VR news, make sure to keep reading VRFocus.
The Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) 2017 had its fair share of surprise virtual reality (VR) announcements – no one expected another two VR videogames from Until Dawn developers Supermassive Games, for example. One of their newly announced VR titles is Bravo Team, a new PlayStation VR shooter, and we have the latest screenshots.
Players in Bravo Team can go alone, or with a friend, to fight against waves of enemies in a run-down city in Eastern Europe. Players can play with the PlayStation Aim controller, allowing for an extra level of immersion.
Linares stresses that the game’s design will test players’ skills; “Our levels and enemy situations are designed to test your ability to work as a team. Calling targets, covering fire and constant communication are the difference between success and failure.”
In the screenshots below you can see more of the city in crisis, as well as a firefight and shots of your player character and weaponry. It all looks fascinating, and with the pedigree of the developer taken into consideration, Bravo Team looks set to be an excellent PlayStation VR shooter – especially when played with a friend.
For everything on Bravo Team, PlayStation VR and the best from E3 2017, make sure to keep reading VRFocus.
The Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) 2017 has introduced us to a brand new wave of PlayStation VR titles, enough to convince us that Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE) are still serious about virtual reality (VR). Among others, we got treated to two brand-new titles from Supermassive Games, the experienced publisher who have made Until Dawn among others.
Supermassive Games’ latest is Bravo Team, a single player or co-op experience which will see players engaging in heated firefights while calling orders or asking for help from their online co-op partner. These features, coupled with the PlayStation Aim, look to make Bravo Team an exciting and immersive experience.
Bravo Team’s Lead Designer, Keith Linares, has shared his enthusiasm for PlayStation Aim, saying; “Playing Bravo Team with the PS VR Aim Controller offers an even more enhanced experience. The super sharp accuracy and intuitive controls will make you feel as though you are actually holding the weapons in the game. As you play, you interact with your environment intuitively.”
Linares continues; “To get around cover simply lean left or right. To aim your weapon, just raise the controller and line up the iron sights. Pinned down by enemy fire? Lift the controller above your head and blind fire away.”
Below you can find Bravo Team’s official trailer, showing players exploring a city in Eastern Europe while fighting for their lives against vicious assailants.
Bravo Team just might be one of PlayStation VR’s essential shooters, especially if you’re looking into investing in a PlayStation Aim controller.
For all of the latest on Bravo Team and PlayStation VR, make sure to keep reading VRFocus.
The Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) 2017 has given us loads of new virtual reality (VR) games to sink our teeth into, and the PlayStation press conference offered some of the most exciting titles. One of the games we want to play most is the prequel to Until Dawn, The Inpatient.
Now The Inpatient’s Game Director, Nick Bowen, has written a post for the PlayStation Blog sharing new details on the VR psychological horror experience.
Playing as a patient with amnesia, you are approached by the Sanatorium’s owner, Jefferson Bragg – seen in the trailer – as he questions you. You play out the videogame slowly discovering who you are, and why you’ve been held in the Sanatorium.
The game will heavily involve the player interacting with the other characters in the Sanatorium – both patients and staff – discovering their own story arcs, personalities and motivations.
As with most VR games, immersion has been at the forefront of the developers’ minds, with Bowen saying; “We’ve designed everything so that it really feels like you are in the game. If you look down you’ll see your body, hands and feet. You can also speak out loud to engage with the characters.”
The team are doubling down on the power of VR to enhance psychological horror; “With The Inpatient, we used psychological horror themes to infiltrate the player’s subconscious and draw them further into the story. Our team spent a lot of time working to create a sense of isolation and fear, making extensive use of immersive 3D binaural audio to complement the amazing visuals and further transport them into their unfamiliar new home.”
The game was written with closer cooperation with Until Dawn scriptwriters, Larry Fessenden and Graham Reznick. This is to create an authentic Until Dawn experience that enhances and expands the lore of the universe whilst remaining coherent and believable.
The Inpatient is releasing on PlayStation VR – for more on Supermassive Games’ VR projects and everything else from E3 2017, stay on VRFocus.
The Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) 2017 is fully underway, and we’ve seen a slew of great virtual reality (VR) videogame announcements over the past few days. Now, we finally have details on Supermassive Games’ Bravo Team, which was announced during the PlayStation press conference.
Bravo Team is a brand new singleplayer and multiplayer co-op shooter from the team who made Until Dawn and Until Dawn: Rush of Blood. Supermassive Games has set Bravo Team in a fictional version of modern day Eastern Europe, in the heart of a city in crisis.
You work either by yourself or with a friend via online co-op, immersing yourselves in the experience further by being able to shout commands to one other over voice chat.
Keith Linares, Bravo Team’s Lead Designer, has posted on the PlayStation Blog to share more details.
Linares reveals that Bravo Team will support the PlayStation Aim controller – a gun-like controller made to help immerse players in PlayStation VR shooters.
Linares stresses that the game’s design will test players’ skills; “Our levels and enemy situations are designed to test your ability to work as a team. Calling targets, covering fire and constant communication are the difference between success and failure.”
As with any VR title, Linares and the team at Supermassive Games focused on immersing players in the world they’ve created; “This sense of ‘being there’ is an enormous focus for us. Not only is the feel of battle key, we believe the sense of place and presence that comes from a seamless in-game experience is incredibly important. From beginning to end, you will fight through the streets and buildings without any loading or level select screens interrupting your immersive PS VR experience. Bravo Team will thrust you into the chaos of an action movie firefight.”
Bravo Team will launch on PlayStation VR, for all of the latest news from E3 2017, stay with VRFocus.
Supermassive Games, the makers of VR titles Until Dawn: Rush of Blood (2016) and Tumble VR (2016), are coming out with a new psychological horror game for PSVR called The Inpatient that seems to offer a level of realism thanks to some very well-tuned facial motion capture.We went hands on at the Sony booth at this year’s E3 to find out just what Supermassive had in store.
Set in the Blackwood Sanatorium, the very same seen in Until Dawn (2015), I awake to find myself strapped to a chair in a dark room. Facing Jefferson Bragg, the owner of the Sanatorium, I’m told I have amnesia and that I desperately need to remember what happened ‘that night’. Bragg comes close, nearly touching my nose and motions to a shadowy figure in the corner, “The Doctor.”
image courtesy Supermassive Games
Telling from Bragg’s Father Knows Best (1954) vibe and the weirdly antique devices and decor, I’m guessing we’re in the ’50s, some 60 years before Until Dawn took place.
From what I gather during the demo, the game makes heavy use of dialogue trees. Supermassive says these will eventually react via audio input, meaning you’ll be able to answer NPCs in real-time with your voice. For the purposes of the demo I answered the binary questions (“Yes, I remember.” – “No, I don’t remember”) with a simple button press of the dualshock 4 controller as the audio input option wasn’t available.
In effort to remember that fateful night, I jump into a memory sequence and find myself standing in a supply closet looking through wooden slats. A man is searching for me and shouting. Peering through the slats, I see that where his face should be is a blurry, unrecognizable mess. The faceless man is brandishing a strange flashlight in his hand, shouting frantically. I can’t move. He flings the door open and blinds me with the light, and suddenly I’m back in the strange chair with the fatherly Bragg.
Talking some more with the remarkably human-looking Bragg, I jump back and forth between the same memory sequence in search of more relevant details before he sedates me with a syringe and I’m carted off to my room by an orderly. I think I was wearing a doctor’s coat in the memory.
image courtesy Supermassive Games
Now I’m in my room, seemingly ripped straight from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975). I chat with the orderly a bit, a man with a kind face and an easygoing attitude. He suggests I take a nap and I oblige. And that’s when things get weird – well, weirder. I appear in a rotting corridor, not unlike the Sanatorium. A ghostly version of the orderly beckons me down the corridor, disappearing and reappearing within inches of my face (read: jump scare). Concluding the demo, I was faced with a fork in the nightmarish hall: follow the orderly from hell, or a strange deer-human chimera. Flipping a mental coin, I chase the deer-person and am immediately captured in a cage. Demo over. Fade to black.
image courtesy Supermassive Games
Visually the game’s characters are extremely lifelike, showing a close attention to detail that was no doubt the result of belabored facial motion capture. Looking into each of their faces, I was left waiting for the uncanny valley to rear its ugly head, for the condescending smiles and eyebrow raises to lag or somehow tell my brain I was seeing clever, albeit imperfect digital puppets. The expectation never quite manifested during my brief time with The Inpatient demo.
Despite the intensely human-like character animations and excellent voice acting, I felt there were some slight issues with scale during the demo. I’m not a giant person, but looking down at myself and at the characters in front of me, I felt a twinge of regret that the game was fumbling somewhat on the immersion factor by making everyone a little bigger than real life would have them, something I found apparent when Bragg got up good and close to me.
Since it was only a 10-15 minute demo, I can’t say for sure how robust the dialogue system really is and how much affect you have on the world. Supermassive maintains that the full game will allow you to navigate different branches of the narrative and even experience different endings, something I’ll be looking forward to in the full review hopefully sometime soon.
No release date has been established for The Inpatient, but we’ll be keeping our eyes peeled in the meantime.
Intel also presented their partnership with Linkin Park, who are releasing a VR experience with the help of AR/VR production studio Spatialand. Linkin Park VR Destination will feature music, contests, merchandise, and the ability to unlock secret fan experiences and events created by the band.
Ubisoft Reveals New VR Thriller Transference:
Photo courtesy Ubisoft
The VR highlight of Ubisoft’s E3 presentation was Transference, a psychological thriller developed by Ubisoft Montreal and Elijah Wood’s content studio SpectreVision. Due to launch in Spring 2018, the experience claims to be part game, part movie, and a ‘true collaboration between Hollywood and gaming’, promising a multi-branching narrative and ‘unparalleled presence’.
Ubisoft Unveils Multiplayer VR Shooter Space Junkies:
image courtesy Ubisoft
While it didn’t make an appearance at Ubisoft’s main presentation, a new VR arcade shooter called Space Junkies was also announced yesterday, described as a “jetpack-fueled arcade shooter developed exclusively for virtual reality gaming”. Shootouts take place in microgravity ‘Orbital Arenas’ with 1v1 or 2v2 combat. The game launches for Rift (Touch required) and Vive in spring 2018.
Alongside the Skyrim VR reveal, Sony’s E3 presentation featured a significant ‘PlayStation VR Game’ section, where they announced 5 brand new VR games, each with a trailer. Star Child from Playful Corp, The Inpatient and Bravo Team from Supermassive Games, Final Fantasy: Monsters of the Deep from Square Enix, and Moss from Polyarc.
Sony’s E3 2017 press conference was bursting at the seams with announcements for PlayStation VR, including two more virtual reality (VR) games from Supermassive Games – bringing their total PlayStation VR catalogue to a respectable four titles. Not much is known about their two new games, Bravo Team and The Inpatient, but there are more hints in The Inpatient’s trailer than you might’ve noticed…
Supermassive Games are of course well-known now for the surprise horror hit Until Dawn, and the VR spin-off Until Dawn: Rush of Blood – with such a recognisable brand name, it only makes sense to continue the franchise – or at least expand the lore, which Supermassive Games seem to be doing with their new PlayStation VR game, The Inpatient.
Zooming in on The Inpatient’s cryptic trailer when the screen shows a painting of a building – presumably the building the game is set in – and the sign outside reads “Sanatorium.”
Until Dawn fans might remember the Sanatorium as a particularly intense section near the end of the game. Of course, Supermassive Games might’ve just liked the word “Sanatorium” and it could be a coincidence. Possible – until you read the building’s full name: The Blackwood Pines Sanatorium. The penny will now have officially dropped for fans of Until Dawn – Blackwood Pines is where the game takes place.
We still don’t know much about The Inpatient, but we can fairly safely assume it acts as a prequel to Until Dawn, before the Sanatorium fell into disarray. According to the Until Dawn timeline, this likely places The Inpatient as taking place some time in the 1950s.
Hopefully the game will give us more clues as to what happened behind the scenes in Until Dawn – how things became quite so violent in the first place – and perhaps pave the way for future entries in this quickly growing franchise.
E3 2017 has been full of brand new game announcements and trailers – for everything PlayStation VR, The Inpatient and all the biggest news from E3 2017, stay on VRFocus.
Today has seen the reveal of more than half-a-dozen new PlayStation VR titles, two of which are coming from UK studio Supermassive Games. The Inpatient and Bravo Team, both revealed during Sony Interactive Entertainment’s (SIE) Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) showcase, will be coming exclusively to PlayStation VR.
Few details are yet known about each title. The Inpatient appears to be an adventure videogame with the player, in first-person, interacting with non-player characters (NPCs) in a hospital environment. The second, Bravo Team, appears to be a military first-person shooter (FPS). No release dates have been confirmed for either title, nor has PlayStation VR compatibility for Bravo Team.
Supermassive Games has been a key developer for PlayStation VR, beginning with a technical demonstration, Jurassic Encounter, back in 2014. Since then the studio offered two PlayStation VR launch titles: Tumble and Until Dawn: Rush of Blood.
Both these titles are expected to be playable at this year’s E3, Los Angeles, which begins tomorrow, 13th June 2017. VRFocus will be on the show floor and bringing you all the latest information on each new PlayStation VR title that has been announced.
There’s only hours to go until the launch of PlayStation VR with some retailers holding midnight launches, and Sony Square NYC doing the same. If you’re waiting for your order to be delivered then there’s lots of new trailers to look over to pass the time. Super Stardust Ultra VR has seen a new trailer arrive and so has Supermassive Games’ Until Dawn:Rush of Blood.
The trailer begins with a short cinematic with a guy saying: “Step right up my friend and welcome to the ride of your life”. From here on out things then start to get very intense as the rollercoaster players sit in for the videogame heads into the darkness, brief flashes of the horrors that wait pop up, maniacal looking enemies dressed as clowns appear, and strange oversized dolls with missing eyes sit at either side of the track watching as the cart rolls by.
Until Dawn: Rush of Blood is a virtual reality (VR) take on the studios previous title for PlayStation 4 Until Dawn. The title is pure heart pounding horror with a creepy circus theme. To get round some of the issues with locomotion in VR the developer puts players on a rollercoaster in a fairground ride cart, thus reducing or negating simulator sickness plaguing some VR experiences. All that’s needed are some trusty weapons and a good aim to see you through.
VRFocus will continue its coverage of Supermassive Games, reporting back with any further VR updates.
Few details are yet known about each title. The Inpatient appears to be an adventure videogame with the player, in first-person, interacting with non-player characters (NPCs) in a hospital environment. The second, Bravo Team, appears to be a military first-person shooter (FPS). No release dates have been confirmed for either title, nor has PlayStation VR compatibility for Bravo Team.