Skydance Interactive released a new behind the scenes video last week showing some stunning new footage of The Walking Dead’s Saints & Sinners‘ environments, set in New Orleans.
The VR game was announced back in July, with a release date initially set for this year. That date has since been revised to January 23, 2020, which is still not too far off.
We went on hands-on with the game last month and we were quite impressed, with Aron highlighting the survival-based combat and the difficult ethical decisions he had to make during the demo. He also noted that the stylized version of New Orleans had him “eager to explore more” upon the game’s release.
A new video from Skydance Interactive, embedded above, delves further into that stylized New Orleans setting, showing some beautiful new footage and explaining why the team chose the city when starting development.
“I think the resilience of the city, we all know it,” said Davidson Cole, one of the game’s writers. “That’s something we’re trying to explore in terms of the human side of things. The Walking Dead is all about resilience as it is, and then you magnify that with a city that has proven extreme resilience over the years.”
They also gave a look at the player’s home base in the game, which is set in a cemetery bordered by high walls (which then affords the convenience of having no walkers in sight). Within the cemetery, there’s a customized church bus stocked with weapons and maps to help you out.
The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners is an upcoming VR survival horror game that places you squarely in the show’s apocalyptic universe of zombies. While developing studios Skydance Interactive and Skybound Entertainment lifted the veil on the game’s trailer today (see it here), the studios also published a nine-minute video on the game’s site that shows off some pretty intriguing pre-alpha gameplay footage—and it’s definitely giving off Fallout vibes.
First unveiled at Comic-Con 2018, The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners takes place in a zombie-ravaged New Orleans in a brand new story to the franchise.
And things look to be shaping up quite well, as the fresh gameplay footage shows off a few things we didn’t know about its supposed 15-hour single-player campaign.
In the first few minutes, we get a glimpse of the game’s base of operations, where you can break down scavenged items, craft new ones, and load up for the missions ahead. There also appears to be a ton of unlockable crafting patterns, letting you create things like nail bombs, protective gear, ammo, and a larger backpack to haul more stuff.
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Image courtesy Sundance Interactive
Image courtesy Sundance Interactive
Image courtesy Sundance Interactive
Image courtesy Sundance Interactive
Image courtesy Sundance Interactive
Something we did know before seeing the video was that the game contains a number of warring factions which you can choose to either help or fight. Here we get a look at one such mission where you pursue a faction leader’s dimwitted brother, requiring you to pull out your flashlight and dive into a gloomy house filled with the haunting grows of a walker.
Much like the Fallout series, the video reveals that you have an infamy rating with clans, as you decide to turn on the leader at the behest of another (the promise of loot probably helps too). In the video, the protagonist is shown turning on the Tower clan and gaining a ‘hated’ status.
The game also shows off hordes of zombies along the way, demonstrating plenty of ranged and melee weapon types at your disposal for some pretty awesome zombie skull-splitting madness.
The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners is targeting a January 23rd, 2020 release on PC VR headsets via Steam and the Oculus Store.
Today Skydance Interactive and Skybound Entertainment have announced The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners is coming out on January 23, 2020 (instead of 2019 like originally planned) and we’ve already gone hands-on with the zombie-slaughtering adventure.
The Walking Dead, with both the comics and the AMC show, is perhaps the most recognizable post-apocalyptic zombie franchise in the world. Telltale’s episodic series already introduced the universe to video games with its point-and-click-style adventure series packed with meaningful choices and Skydance Interactive is following their lead with the survival-focused, first person VR title The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners.
Set in a dilapidated and flooded New Orleans, Saints & Sinners puts you in the middle of a chaotic world split between several factions. There is the Tower, a group located in a highrise downtown that controls the flow of zombies through their use of bells, and outsider groups that are hellbent on making the Tower answer for crimes they’ve committed. The development team worked with Skybound Entertainment, The Walking Dead creator Robert Kirkman’s company, to loosely fit it into to the greater Walking Dead universe.
I played an incredibly enjoyable segment which took place a few chapters into Saints & Sinners at a press event in Los Angeles last week. The general objective of my demo was to find several machine parts somewhere in a small residential area packed with overturned cars, decrepit homes, and, of course, zombies. Skydance had me armed to the teeth for the demo in order to experience the combat in full even though you begin the game with far less.
Saints & Sinners makes full use of all space on your body. I had regular-sized weapons on each hip, an assault rifle over my right shoulder, a backpack full of gear over my left, my notebook with quests and other menus on the right side of my chest, and a flashlight that needed a good bit of shaking in order to work on my left. I felt like an absolute commando with everything on my body to the point where it was difficult to interact with other objects in the world because my gear attached to my body would get in the way. Hopefully that confusion was due to me just learning how to play.
As I trekked through the flooded streets of suburbia I took a few of my melee weapons for a spin on some nearby zombies. As soon as I engaged with them one thing was clear: Saints & Sinners wants you to feel like you’re in a zombie apocalypse, with all the desperation included. Zombies came at me hard and it was not easy to land a kill on most of them. Using big two handed weapons, like an axe, pushed me to be as accurate and methodical with my swings as possible. They needed to land squarely on the head to be effective and smaller weapons, like knives, required a similar approach. Both weapon types got stuck in zombie heads often, making each moment in combat a frantic mess. It was incredibly fun.
I did kill one with a spoon, so I had that going for me.
The struggle is intentional, as Skydance told me. They didn’t want me to feel like a zombie killing machine, they wanted it to be about survival. I had a watch on my arm that ticked down to the moment the bells would ring, meaning zombies would be moved by the Tower. While I would’ve loved to stick around to kill some zombies, I knew I couldn’t take them on and come out alive. I had to complete the mission.
I noticed that a nearby non-playable character was shooting at the zombies I was fighting. I made my way into the house they were in and was directed to a man in the side yard. This demo took place midway through the game so I wasn’t caught up on the story thus far, but these people were with the Tower and I had to appease this guy to get the machine parts I needed. He asked me to head a few doors down and try to free his brother from the clutches of some outsiders.
I found the other house quickly and scaled a pipe on the outside by climbing, which is a cool addition to something you wouldn’t think would have any kind of vertical elements. I walked inside the second floor and found outsiders, who were about to execute the brother. As soon as I got close enough all attention was on me.
The leader of the outsiders said the man had killed his daughter and the Tower refused to answer for it. They said that the Tower always preaches community, but pushes away anyone they view as a burden. For some odd reason he asked me to decide his fate. At any point I could have killed the man I was speaking to, one of the three other armed people in the room, or the hostage. The choice was always there and it came with consequences, if I killed a quest giver in The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners I could lose access to missions later on.
It was a difficult decision, but it was only a demo and I didn’t have much time to mull it over. I could relate to the man that lost his daughter so I shot the hostage. Then everyone in the room agreed to go back to the previous house where I had received my orders and kill everyone there. I was caught up in the moment so I went with it.
We stormed the house guns drawn and started lighting things up. I quickly went from using two hands to gun down enemies with my rifle to pulling out my handgun. It was fast and exciting, although I didn’t see many consequences here. The enemy AI seemed downright stupid. They strafed and shot back, but it felt like I barely took any damage. I was hardly even hurt after fumbling with all the equipment on my body right in front of an enemy. Humans are supposed to be more threatening than the actual zombies in the world of The Walking Dead, but that didn’t feel like the case in my demo.
We cleared the house and I found the machine parts I needed on a bed upstairs. It was time to head back to my base camp, a location where you can gear up and craft items, to figure out what to do next. Bells started ringing, which meant the area would be flooded with zombies shortly. I ran back out into the street, weaving between groups of the undead only stopping to kill a few in order to open a path. I nearly died on multiple occasions but finally made it to the the boat that would get me home.
My overall experience with The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners was fantastic. The combat was survival-focused and frantic, the single choice I made in the demo made me pause, and the entire stylized New Orleans Skydance created had me eager to explore more. I’m tempted to say that this could give Telltale’s best game a run for its money.
The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners releases on January 23, 2020 but Skydance Interactive couldn’t confirm which platforms they’d be launching Saints & Sinners on. My demo was on an Oculus Rift. They also said the entire story mode would take around 15 hours to complete.
The Walking Dead Onslaught is fast approaching its launch window this Fall 2019 and we’ve got some details about the game’s campaign, co-op features, and gameplay in this recorded interview.
Back at E3 2019 we talked to Survios Chief Creative Officer and Co-Founder James Iliff about the upcoming game. Prior to the interview we also went hands-on with the game for the first time, which you can read more about here, and got to see the gore and dismember first hand from inside the headset. My demo was on an original Rift but it’s also coming to other PC VR platforms as well as PSVR later this year.
In the interview, which you can watch above, we talked about the game’s seven-part long campaign, the inclusion of full co-op for the campaign, and the secondary challenge mode that’s designed to be essentially infinitely replayable — including co-op support there as well.
Notably The Walking Dead Onslaught features an arm-swinging locomotion movement system, as well as stick movement, and you can see all of that in action in the video as well. Melee combat felt visceral and satisfying, as did the pistol, shotgun, and assault rifle that I got to try. Four of the most iconic characters from the show will be playable (meaning Rick, Michonne, Daryl, and Carol) and it will also include iconic weapons from throughout the series. Narratively it takes place in the Season 8 or Season 9 portion of the show’s lineage.
Let us know what you think after watching and leave any comments or questions down below!
I’ve killed a lot of zombies in VR. I’ve blown them up, cut them to pieces, shot their heads off, and spent my fair share running away from them across a multitude of games. But The Walking Dead: Onslaught by Survios may have my favorite combat system to deal with the undead that I’ve seen yet.
As an officially licensed game that is being created in partnership with AMC, Survios is able to actually leverage the brand itself. This means that players will walk in the shoes of Rick, Michonne, Daryl, and Carol across a post-apocalyptic world overrun with walkers. It’s got a campaign, replayable missions, upgrade mechanics, visceral melee, a litany of guns, and up to four-player co-op to boot.
During my demo at E3 2019 I played as Rick. It was an average length demo, about 15-20 minutes long, and I got to see a handgun, shotgun, and assault rifle, as well as a machete and the iconic barbed wire bat, Lucille. Both the shotgun and Lucille were major stand outs for me.
Rather than using traditional analog stick-based movement, I decided to instead try their fluid locomotion system that’s been adapted from Creed: Rise to Glory. Using this method, you hold down both the A and Y button the Touch controllers (I played my demo on an original Oculus Rift) and swing your arms as if you were running. It worked well enough, but this method prevented me from shooting and moving at the same time which was a bit frustrating.
Core gameplay was extremely familiar in that you swing melee weapons and aim down the sights to shoot guns. They aren’t reinventing the way you kill zombies in this game, but are instead evolving the way in which they die. You can lop off arms at specific joints, chop off hands, slice heads off at the neck, cut off legs, and even carve things into their rotting skin if you want. When you stab through their body blades can get stuck, requiring you to grab onto the body with your free hand and yank it out. You can even grab them by the neck and do Rick’s iconic knife to the skull stab to finish them off.
It’s gory, bloody, and a bit unsettling even after years of video game desensitization, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t love it. However, part of me does worry that it may be leveraging The Walking Dead name in a way that’s proven to fail in the past.
If you look at TellTale’s Walking Dead series, arguably one of the best licensed video game series of all-time, clearly they have an intimate understanding of the source material and told a moving, deeply engaging story with real human emotion. That’s the thing about The Walking Dead: it’s a story about humans and the cost of survival, the zombies are just a plot device. It’s not actually about killing zombies.
In this way, The Walking Dead: Onslaught misses the mark — but at least they’ve made the virtual violence fun as far as I can tell.
My demo was just single player, but I can only imagine how much more chaotic and fun it would be in co-op. Survios explained that there will be skills to upgrade as a progression mechanic, but I didn’t get to see any of that. You get scores based on your performance in the mission and rank up with XP, so that’s all built into the design already. Scattered across levels I found lots of fuel and food and other types of loot as well.
The Walking Dead: Onslaught feels like the mechanical culmination of all of Survios’ past games into one well-crafted package. It’s got the co-op mission structure of Raw Data, the melee feedback of Creed, the movement style of Sprint Vector, plus zombies. The campaign is said to be seven missions long and should last around four hours, which is a decent length for something that is supposed to be replayed. There’s going to be a horde mode as well.
At the end of my mission I had to literally cut through a mass of zombies to get to the extraction point and I mowed them down like a machine wielding Lucille. It felt great as the blood splattered across my view. No two zombies ever seemed to die the exact same way.
Survios told me that The Walking Dead: Onslaught is coming to all major PC VR platforms and PSVR. We asked about a Quest version, but didn’t really get a definitive answer. Let us know what you think of the game down in the comments below!
Today during our first-ever E3 VR Showcase Survios debuted gameplay of its upcoming VR game, The Walking Dead: Onslaught, based on the hit AMC show. In the game you get to go inside of the iconic universe that’s overrun by the undead walkers and fight side-by-side with iconic characters from the show like Daryl, Rick, and Michonne.
Previously, Survios released this teaser trailer that really only hinted at the tone and ambiance without actually showing any real gameplay footage. But now, after the reveal in today’s showcase, we’ve got a good look at how the game plays.
As expected, there is a heavy focus on blood, gore, and dismemberment. I actually got the chance to try out an early build at GDC earlier this year that was just a white dev room for combat testing. I picked up some guns, swords, a bat, crossbow, and more and got to try them out on stationary zombie characters.
What immediately stood out to me was the extreme attention to detail. I could slice individual parts of zombies off by slashing exactly where I intended. The developers even spoke to me about their layered mesh system that provided a simulate skin texture to keep the entrails inside until the zombie was sliced open.
We don’t know much about the story yet, or if it will include multiplayer (I’d imagine it will since that’s a key feature in virtually every other Survios VR title) but we will get the the chance to go hands-on with it later this week at E3 so stay tuned for more details.
The Walking Dead: Onslaught is releasing this fall and is coming to Rift, Vive, and likely other major VR platforms.
Survios, the studio behind Creed: Rise to Glory (2018) and Raw Data (2017), today unveiled a new VR game based on AMC’s TV series The Walking Dead.
CalledThe Walking Dead Onslaught, the combat-based game promises to have you fighting alongside the characters from the series in the first-person, however in what Suvios calls an exclusive original story created in partnership with AMC.
The game is said to include detailed melee, ranged combat, player progression, and a full campaign mode.
Survios says in the game’s Steam listing that it will feature single player and online co-op multiplayer. The studio hasn’t confirmed exactly which platforms Onslaught is coming to, however the Steam page lists both HTC Vive and Oculus Rift. The game is slated to release sometime in Fall 2019.
I got a chance to go hands-on with an early prototype at GDC 2019, and although I was only allowed to walk around a test area with dummy characters, I did get a chance to go ham on all manner of stationary zombified corpses using a variety of weapons to see what the game’s combat might have in store.
The studio showed me a pretty gruesome dismemberment system that reacts to various melee weapons such as katanas, machetes, and improvised weapons like long bow staff-sized pipes. When it comes to dismemberment, you’ll also have to put some heft behind your slices to get a clean break, because Survios, at least at the time I tried it, were adamant about not being able to simply waggle your motion controller to down zombies entirely.
Some of the things I tried were stabbing a zombie in the neck, slicing the zombie’s stomach open, and completely chopping off limbs. While I wouldn’t call it 100 percent physics-based, it is certainly poised to get you up and moving, as you can grab zombies by the neck to stop them, push them away from you, and (of course) blow them halfway across the room with a shotgun blast.
I also got to play with a smorgasbord of ranged weapons, including cross bows, automatic rifles, shotguns, and various pistols—both semi-automatic and fully automatic.
While I haven’t delved deeper into the game, The Walking Dead Onslaught it poised to be a pretty violent game any way you slice it (pun intended), although I can imagine the studio might scale back on some of the blood should they decided to install the game in their fleet of VR arcades.
Auf der E3 2017 wurden bereits einige neue VR-Spiele vorgestellt, darunter spannende Titel wie Fallout 4 VR und Doom VFR. Doch die Ankündigungen gehen weiter, denn Skydance Interactive plant in Kooperation mit Skybound Entertainment die Entwicklung neuer Videospiele und VR-Erfahrungen zum Zombie-Erfolgsfranchise The Walking Dead.
Kooperation zur Entwicklung von The Walking Dead VR
Der Spieleentwicker Skydance Interactive machte erst vor Kurzem mit dem Titel Archangel auf sich aufmerksam. Nun steht eine Kooperation mit Skybound Entertainment an, um gemeinsam The Walking Dead VR zu entwickeln. Das neue VR-Spiel basiert auf der Unreal Engine und erhält laut den Entwicklern ein komplett neues Setting, welches sich somit von den bekannten Storyverläufen aus Comics und Fernsehserie unterscheidet. Zudem darf der Spieler mit neuen Charakteren interagieren. Doch das ist noch nicht alles, denn Skydance Interactive plant weitere Videospiel-Adaptionen rund um die Zombie-Serie.
Robert Kirkman und David Alpert gründeten Skybound Entertainment im Jahr 2010. Das Unternehmen spezialisiert sich auf Entertainment über sämtliche Medien hinweg. So entwickelten sie verschiedene Titel für Comics, TV, Film oder den Gaming-Bereich. Eines der bekanntesten Franchises ist The Walking Dead. Seit Beginn des Jahres 2017 arbeitet Skybound an VR-Projekten.
Mitgründer David Alpert ist von den Fähigkeiten des künftigen Partners Skydance Interactive überzeugt, denn sowohl die Herangehensweise an Projekte sowie die narrativen Erzählmethoden der beiden Unternehmen scheinen sich gut zu ergänzen. Auch David Ellison und Jesse Sisgold – CEO und Präsident des Unternehmens – freuen sich auf die Zusammenarbeit, wie sie in einem Interview berichteten: „Es ist unglaublich spannend mit Skybound zusammenzuarbeiten, um das ikonische Phänomen The Walking Dead mit den dazugehörigen Charakteren, Settings und Storyverläufen gemeinsam in ein VR-Spiel zu verpacken.“
Die Entwickler sind motiviert, sowohl die Wünsche der Fans zu erfüllen, wie auch neue Maßstäbe im Bereich Virtual Reality zu setzen. Bisher ist noch kein Termin für die Veröffentlichung bekannt, doch das Projekt klingt mehr als vielversprechend.
Auf der E3 2017 wurden bereits einige neue VR-Spiele vorgestellt, darunter spannende Titel wie Fallout 4 VR und Doom VFR. Doch die Ankündigungen gehen weiter, denn Skydance Interactive plant in Kooperation mit Skybound Entertainment die Entwicklung neuer Videospiele und VR-Erfahrungen zum Zombie-Erfolgsfranchise The Walking Dead.
Kooperation zur Entwicklung von The Walking Dead VR
Der Spieleentwicker Skydance Interactive machte erst vor Kurzem mit dem Titel Archangel auf sich aufmerksam. Nun steht eine Kooperation mit Skybound Entertainment an, um gemeinsam The Walking Dead VR zu entwickeln. Das neue VR-Spiel basiert auf der Unreal Engine und erhält laut den Entwicklern ein komplett neues Setting, welches sich somit von den bekannten Storyverläufen aus Comics und Fernsehserie unterscheidet. Zudem darf der Spieler mit neuen Charakteren interagieren. Doch das ist noch nicht alles, denn Skydance Interactive plant weitere Videospiel-Adaptionen rund um die Zombie-Serie.
Robert Kirkman und David Alpert gründeten Skybound Entertainment im Jahr 2010. Das Unternehmen spezialisiert sich auf Entertainment über sämtliche Medien hinweg. So entwickelten sie verschiedene Titel für Comics, TV, Film oder den Gaming-Bereich. Eines der bekanntesten Franchises ist The Walking Dead. Seit Beginn des Jahres 2017 arbeitet Skybound an VR-Projekten.
Mitgründer David Alpert ist von den Fähigkeiten des künftigen Partners Skydance Interactive überzeugt, denn sowohl die Herangehensweise an Projekte sowie die narrativen Erzählmethoden der beiden Unternehmen scheinen sich gut zu ergänzen. Auch David Ellison und Jesse Sisgold – CEO und Präsident des Unternehmens – freuen sich auf die Zusammenarbeit, wie sie in einem Interview berichteten: „Es ist unglaublich spannend mit Skybound zusammenzuarbeiten, um das ikonische Phänomen The Walking Dead mit den dazugehörigen Charakteren, Settings und Storyverläufen gemeinsam in ein VR-Spiel zu verpacken.“
Die Entwickler sind motiviert, sowohl die Wünsche der Fans zu erfüllen, wie auch neue Maßstäbe im Bereich Virtual Reality zu setzen. Bisher ist noch kein Termin für die Veröffentlichung bekannt, doch das Projekt klingt mehr als vielversprechend.
Skybound Entertainment in partnership with Skydance Interactive have confirmed that multiple interactive VR games based on the hugely popular The Walking Dead franchise are in the works.
Here’s an unexpected treat for VR enthusiasts among the hordes of fans of The Walking Dead out there. In an interview with IGN, Skybound (co-founded by The Walking Dead creator Robert Kirkman) President of Interactive Dan Murray and Skydance President of Interactive Peter Akemann have discussed details of a new series of “immersive narrative storytelling” titles based on the franchise that are currently in the works at both companies.
Apparently, the new games will be interactive and, according to the IGN piece, rendered with the Unreal engine – which hopefully lays to rest any assumptions these are merely some sort of branching 360 video abomination. “The Walking Dead, it all comes back to moral choice and what would you do as the player. That’s sort of the essential principal pillar of the IP. I think that’s what people who either read the comic, watch the show, play the games,” says Murray in the IGN interview. “What better way to experience that than being in the environment itself?”
Image courtesy AMC
The storyline is being fleshed out with both parties cagey on the details, but the games will exist in the extended The Walking Dead universe, albeit whether they’ll take cues, for example, from Telltale Games’ excellent and critically lauded interactive narrative series. “There will be some surprises. We haven’t decided that. We can’t speak too much to what the storyline might be, but there will be a new story. We will be introducing new characters and a new storyline,” said Murray. “Beyond that, that’s something that we will be able to reveal as we dig deeper into development.”
What is clear is that the companies are targeting all three major VR platforms, PSVR, Oculus Rift and Steam VR (HTC Vive), so there’s hope the games will sport visuals to match. Certainly Murray seems to view VR as a golden opportunity for the series “We want to basically treat VR as a big platform endeavor for us to tell new stories in. The goal here is to build on top of that, and Walking Dead will be the first of many,” said Murray.
Those who have followed our E3 coverage in years past will of course remember that Starbreeze produced a VR experience based on The Walking Dead game in turn developed by Overkill Software. At E3 2015 the company used the experience to launch it’s in-house developed StarVR 210 degree VR headset, formerly InfinitEye. It’s unclear if this new announcement has any effect on work Starbreeze or Overkill are undertaking, but one things’s for sure, it sounds like you won’t be able to move for VR Walking Dead games in the not too distant future.
