Since its launch in 2016, PlayStation VR has seen the emergence of impressive exclusive titles, from Astro Bot: Rescue Mission to Tetris Effect. However, PSVR lacks a real blockbuster, a system vendor of unknown size that can also showcase VR to its fullest. Who better to lead the charge than Sony, its own studio and its ambitious PSVR title, Blood and Truth, a London thriller staged to turn the player into an action hero.
The Soho-based studio has a different pedigree than the developers at Sony's Worldwide Studios, and not just because it has the privilege of being next door to PlayStation headquarters.
"Everyone had a lot of new ideas and no preconceived notions of what games should be."
Tara Saunders - Director of Studio OperationsWhen it was founded in 1993 as Team Soho, the development team was made up of college graduates with virtually no experience in the video game industry. It was still mostly a junior crew when Tara Saunders, now head of studio operations, began her career in that country as a junior animator working on the GTA series 'The Getaway for the London clone', set in London.
"Everyone had a lot of new ideas and no preconceived notions of what games were supposed to be," Saunders told TechRadar.
Indeed, after The Getaway, London Studio has built a heritage of pioneering emerging technology, playing a role in developing hardware as well as the innovative games that power it. Among them, the EyeToy webcam, which essentially turned humans into a controller, Singstar, which saw the studio develop a unique pitch detection system to make karaoke a competitive party experience, and Wonderbook, which combines Marker AR technology to move the motion control. controller to literally create magic. In each case, there is a strong technological thread that brings this material together.
It's Morpheus time!
PSVR demo The London Heist serves as a spiritual precursor to Blood and Truth (Credit: SIE London Studio)
It was a natural progression for London Studio to be involved in PlayStation VR projects from day one, developing the internal LSSDK engine for VR rendering and creating a collection of demos that would later be integrated into the title. PSVR Launch: PlayStation VR Worlds.
"VR seemed like the right piece of technology that we could focus our skills on," says Saunders. "We work on the video game, in 3D. Looking at Wonderbook and what it can do with AR markers, what works with AR becomes what we can do with virtual reality. With new technologies, we're relying on every iteration to do something bigger and better with everything we've learned."
Blood and Truth is essentially the culmination of the studio's work on a whole new level, taking bolder creative steps than other VR developers have yet to take. Instead of a mute, disembodied avatar, he turns to ex-SAS officer Ryan Marks back home to help defend his family (and his illegitimate business) from a criminal takeover.
"We wanted a game based on reality rather than science fiction."
Stuart Whyte - GamemasterAlthough photographic reality is a source of jitters for VR, London Studio has doubled down on its photogrammetry technology to ground its characters and create their realism, while character performances rely on eye contact to really engage with the action. scene. . not just an observer
Another central problem in virtual reality has been how to combat locomotion. In fact, most developers choose to avoid any movement or have it teleport across. Speaking to Blood and Truth game director Stuart Whyte, the team wanted to address it very early on.
“Teleportation wouldn't work thematically,” says Whyte. "We wanted a game based on reality rather than science fiction."
Instead, the traversal almost runs on rails with node-based navigation, so you only look where you want to move.
all on the bridge
Blood and Truth combines the glamor and grit of London, the casinos and the towers (Credit: SIE London Studio)
Without having to fight a complicated control scheme, the focus is on what the player can do with their hands, which is much more than just shooting people. The variety of what you can do with the scroll controllers makes for a richer and more immersive VR experience, but it's also important for stimulation.
"When you're in a VR shootout, the intensity is staggering compared to TV," says Whyte. "But on the contrary, it can't be expanded, so we separated it with other object interactions and story beats."
Shooting is always an essential part of what you'll do in Blood and Truth, but even that makes the physical appearance more satisfying than just aiming and pulling the trigger. When shooting from an automatic weapon, you can hold it with both hands to stabilize your target, reloading is done manually by inserting ammunition cartridges into the chamber of the weapon, and you can also perform very bad actions. as heroes of the action hero, such as double driving or shooting (something that is not limited to weapons).
"When you take part in a shot exchange in virtual reality, the intensity is amazing compared to a television."
Stuart Whyte - Game MasterThere are times when your hands can perform tactile movements, such as climbing stairs, crawling on the floor, or in a tense moment of free fall, reaching out to grab a ledge, and getting up very quickly. .
Even with the limitations of VR technology just following his head, the team uses Move controller calibration to map his body, so he has a holster for his weapons, but keeps larger weapons like guns. his back that he can reach above his head, while the ammunition is attached to his chest.
"It took a lot of work, because the console and the camera only traced the player's head, and she has no idea about the rest of her body," says Whyte. "Trying to make this intuitive approach was difficult, but we spent a lot of time there."
the call from london
The game is rooted in realism; finally, action movie realism, that is (Image credit: SIE London Studio)
Since the first sea shark attack that has fascinated us with the potential of Playstation VR, London Studio has harnessed the potential of the technology and its limitations to offer new opportunities for virtual reality. While Blood and Truth may be the culmination of all the studio's work so far (even some of the game's panoramic views of London illustrate The Getaway's strengths), this is only the beginning of the roadmap. Studio VR. "We like the fact that we've done a lot of smaller things, but we want to make big blockbusters with beautiful, well-developed stories and believable characters," he says.
As a studio with extensive experience using emerging technologies to create new experiences, it also has another division that is quietly working on new live-action technologies to create interactive and cinematic games, though that's about all Saunders is ready to say for the moment. . Otherwise, the main goal is to become the world's first VR studio, or in his words, "our ambition is to become the ugly dog of VR."
PSVR is already doing better than other VR headsets currently on the market, thanks to its relatively affordable price and focus on gaming, though its four million installs are still a modest success compared to over 90 million. PS4 sold. Blood and Truth is perhaps the biggest headline in the mass market in VR.