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!
AMC’s The Walking Dead has been made into plenty of videogames, the most popular of which is probably the episodic, graphic adventure by Telltale Games and Skybound Games. When it comes to virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR), the franchise has featured in Pinball FX2 VR and got players out and about with The Walking Dead: Our World. Now the studio behind Raw Data and Creed: Rise to Glory, Survios, has announced a collaboration with AMC on an official VR videogame, The Walking Dead Onslaught.
Because The Walking Dead Onslaught is an official VR experience, fans will be able to take the role of their favourite survivors from the series, having to deal with the seemingly endless walker threat in an exclusive original story.
Featuring a full campaign mode and player progression alongside melee and ranged combat, the title will be using Survios’ ‘Progressive Dismemberment System’ for what sounds like a visceral combat experience that is going to be quite brutal. Players will find walker limbs are vulnerable for removal at many joints, including arms, legs and neck; while a proprietary “gore mesh” creates realistic wounds anywhere on a walker’s body. And just for added realism enemies can be impaled and react where they are stabbed, as well as weapons getting stuck, or players feeling resistance when pulling out weapons.
There’s also a ‘Melee Restraint System’ allowing walkers to be grabbed and restrained for precision melee attacks and strategic defence, or simply pushed and thrown at other walkers.
“Not only is The Walking Dead Onslaught a dream opportunity for the megafans in the studio, but we’ve had the unique challenge to further evolve VR with our ‘progressive dismemberment’ technology,” said Survios head of studio Mike McTyre in a statement. “This is a standalone game experience featuring one of the most beloved TV IPs in the world. AMC is an incredible partner, encouraging us to push immersion to a new level that can only be experienced in VR with ‘The Walking Dead.’”
“The Walking Dead Onslaught is the immersive VR experience fans have been waiting for,” said Yoel Flohr, EVP of Digital and Franchise Development at AMC. “We’re thrilled to be working with Survios, an industry leader in world-class visuals and innovative gameplay, to give players the chance to experience first-hand the terror and thrill of The Walking Dead’s apocalyptic world.”
The Walking Dead Onslaught is scheduled to launch Fall 2019 in VR arcades and for home VR platforms (no specific headsets have been mentioned just yet). As further details are released, VRFocus will keep you updated.
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.
Today Survios and AMC are announcing a brand new entry in the universe of walkers called The Walking Dead Onslaught, a made-for VR game that takes place in the same world as the iconic TV show it’s based on. In it you’ll meet (and play as) characters from the show such as Rick Grimes and Michonne and engage in some of the most brutally realistic and visceral combat we’ve seen in VR yet.
Zombies and VR go together like brains and headshots. Ever since Arizona Sunshine and The Brookhaven Experiment burst onto the scene years ago other developers have been chasing the high that those games caused.
According to a press release:
“Fight your fears head-on and step into the apocalyptic world of AMC’s global hit series “The Walking Dead” with the show’s official VR game, The Walking Dead Onslaught.
From AMC and Survios, the studio behind top-selling VR titles Raw Data and Creed: Rise to Glory, The Walking Dead Onslaught invites players to assume the roles of their favorite survivors from the TV series, struggling against the relentless walker threat while confronting both the horrors and humanity of this apocalyptic world. With an exclusive original story, visceral real-motion melee and ranged combat, player progression and a full campaign mode, AMC and Survios deliver the most immersive “The Walking Dead” experience yet.”
Details are scarce for now, but rest assured that we will have more details coming at you during our debut E3 VR Showcase on June 10, 2019. You can read more about that showcase right here.
Strangely enough, this isn’t the only VR game based on The Walking Dead on the way. Last year Archangel: Hellfire developer Skydance Interactive announced The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners, due for release this year.
The Walking Dead Onslaught is coming this Fall in 2019 but platforms are unannounced. We’d wage it’s all the major ones you’d expect. Let us know what you think of the game and it’s agonizingly brief teasers down in the comments below!
Overkill's The Walking Dead for the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One have been postponed without a new release date. The co-op zombie shooter suffered massive delays, then received lukewarm reviews once it launched for the PC through Steam.
The Walking Dead: Our World, the location-based AR game that puts zombies into the world around you using your phone’s GPS and camera, is getting weekly mission content themed around Season 9 of AMC’s The Walking Dead TV show. New missions will release after each new episode.
According to a press release from AMC and Next Games, the missions will go live immediately after episodes air on Monday nights, beginning next week on October 8th. After completing missions (which will vary from solo encounters to group encounters) players will be able to earn guaranteed rewards, such as characters from the show.
“The AMC Games team can’t wait for fans to see what lies in store for their favorite characters
when Season 9 of ‘The Walking Dead’ debuts this Sunday,” said Clayton Neuman, VP of Games for AMC in a prepared statement. “We’ve worked with Next Games to weave upcoming events from the show into the design of the game, giving our fans a unique new platform to interact with the ‘The Walking Dead’ universe. We will continue to innovate and add new content to expand The Walking Dead: Our World, and the upcoming Season 9 missions are a great next step.”
When we published our initial impressions of The Walking Dead AR back in July, we commended it for nailing a good balance between content that you can do from home versus content that requires actively seeking it out in the real world. The AR mode could use some work, but given the limitations of current technology it’s not bad. Especially since it automatically records footage for you to share.
Connecting the two universes together is a great move to keep fans of the show coming back to the game across the entire stretch of Season 9. We’d love to see more IPs promote across mediums like this.
Let us know what you think down in the comments below!
It’s the start of one of VRFocus’ favourite times of year when virtual reality (VR) companies start releasing an influx of scary content for horror fans. Immersive content creation and distribution specialist WITHIN is providing a month long series of scary experiences starting today, with new additions being added every Wednesday until Halloween.
WITHIN will be kicking of its inaugural Fright Fest Collection today with eight experiences, including five app premieres. These premieres will include:
The Caretaker – created by Jacob Wasserman, Adam Donald, and Ant Gentile of Hidden Content. This follows the mysterious occurrences at a strange hotel when a couple arrives to wait for a mechanic after their car breaks down on a cold winter night.
An Obituary – created by Jean Yoon, Kuk-seok Yang, and Jin-hee Kim. The experience charts the unsettling course of a funeral when the man attending realizes he is the sole mourner alongside the deceased’s grieving mother. Why is there nobody else in the village?
11:57 – is a first-person POV nightmare in which you are strapped to a chair in a dark cave. The experience revolves around your every move, but may leave you cowering under your bed.
Also available will be Dinner Party, the pilot episode of a new anthology series called, The Incident. Focused on actual supernatural events the first installment is based on the story of Betty and Barney Hill, an interracial couple who reported the first nationally known story of a UFO abduction in 1961.
And from WITHIN’s archives the Fright Fest Collection will include Greg Nicotero’s The Walking Dead, AMC’s The Terror, and Sergeant James, created by Alexandre Perez, which plumbs the depths of the quintessential childhood nightmare.
As for things to come, the week before Halloween will bring the launch of Portal, a first-person experience of a Spanish witches’ seance, created by Futura VR Studio in Barcelona.
Further content will be announced throughout October, so keep reading VRFocus for further updates from WITHIN.
The Walking Dead developer Telltale Games abruptly laid off the majority of its employees last week, but the studio now says the game's final season could still be finished with another partner.
The Walking Dead developer Telltale Games has reportedly been hit with huge layoffs, resulting in the cancellation of projects. A small team will apparently stick around to finish The Walking Dead.
