“We think the greatest promise of VR is its ability to immerse players completely into virtual worlds. And that the best games for that experience will be first-person, open-world RPGs.”
— Pete Hines, during Bethesda’s E3 2016 presser
When it comes to personal goals, you can’t really set the bar much higher. With HTC and Oculus struggling to communicate the merits of virtual reality, or sell a significant number of headsets, Pete Hines might as well have promised to build a holodeck in your house. Complete immersion is a lofty promise for a technology that doesn’t let you walk more than 10 feet in any given direction, in the best case scenario, much less mimic our other senses. But you might be surprised how little you need to feel the harsh, irradiated sands of the Glowing Sea against your skin or smell the ever-present corpses that dot Massachusetts once you’re experiencing the sights and sounds of the Commonwealth from the true first-person perspective.
You might remember that we played Fallout VR back in June, just hours after the project was announced. At the time, it wasn’t much more than a glorified shooting gallery. But it’s astounding how much progress Bethesda made in the last couple months.
Just as before, our demo began outside the Red Rocket station near Concord. I had a brief moment to familiarize myself with the Vive control scheme, a surprisingly easy-to-learn adaptation of the standard configuration, that maps your Pip Boy to the left controller and your currently-equipped weapon to the right. Firearms and Pip Boy functions can be swapped with a press of the touchpad on the corresponding controller. You can even pick up, move and examine junk items scattered across the Commonwealth. The only major change from “normal” Fallout 4 was a transition from the standard “Left Stick Moves, Right Stick Aims” layout to the teleportation mechanic that’s become commonplace in first-person VR games.
Once I’d collected my weapons — a small assortment that included a 10mm pistol, Fat Man, an unmodified Laser Gun and a Shotgun — it was time for action. A small group of raiders decided to attack the Red Rocket, followed quickly by a wave of ghouls. Neither was especially difficult. Between the help of the Sole Survivor’s trusty hound, the invincibility that was clearly enabled and my diverse assortment of weaponry, a few trash mobs didn’t exactly have me worried. And you’d be surprised how much easier it is to aim when you can actually look down your weapon’s iron sights. But the real fun came didn’t start until after I’d finished defending the station, when I began poking around the environment a bit. I’d hoped to find the edges of the demo. To trigger whatever cheeky “Please turn around” message Bethesda settled on for the QuakeCon demo.
Turns out, there isn’t one.
Armed with the knowledge that there weren’t any invisible walls confining me to the station, I made a beeline for the only set of buildings that seemed close enough to reach before I was forced to abandon my demo. As I got closer, the sounds of gunfire began to echo off nearby buildings, letting me know my search would pay dividends of some kind. Turns out, I was just around the corner from the Museum of Freedom. And the demo was set early enough in the campaign that Preston Garvey and the Minutemen were still trying to repel a raider invasion.
I leapt into action, opening fire on a pair of raiders who’d yet to realize I was behind them. The first dropped in seconds, thanks to a shotgun blast at close range, and my laser gun turned the second to ash before he could respond. With that, I headed inside to poke around the Museum and help Preston mop up the last of the attackers. What followed was an amazing gunfight, with bullets and bolts of energy flying every direction, as I worked my way from one floor to the next.
Many of the interactions still need polish. I found a handful of doors I couldn’t open, along with plenty of crates and bags I couldn’t loot. But I did manage to earn a laugh from my chaperone by picking up a nearby hard hat and trying to place it on my own head. Sadly, that’s not how equipment works in Fallout VR . And it turns out the oft-endearing lankiness that accompanies so many Bethesda releases is still present in virtual reality. After the battle outside the Museum of Freedom, I had to teleport through a wall to reach the Minutemen holed up on the top floor. In the grand scheme of things, they’re relatively minor problems, and some will probably be fixed before Fallout VR is released to the public. But don’t expect a bug-free experience.
There is no need to manage expectations this time. This isn’t a watered-down, VR-friendly take on the Sole Survivor’s quest. It’s not a side story. Bethesda is bringing the entirety of Fallout 4 into virtual reality, from the smallest bits of junk to the abandoned vaults and dilapidated towns we’ve been exploring since November. And it’s fucking mind blowing.
I’m not terribly proud to say I flat out ignored my chaperone’s initial request to remove the headset. I needed to see more. If the greatest promise of VR is its ability to immerse the player in a new world, I think it’s safe to say that, right now, no one in the industry is closer to realizing that potential than Bethesda. Fallout VR was incredible. It completely redefined my expectations for virtual reality, shifting the goalposts further than they’ve moved in the years since my first EVE: Valkyrie demo. We can only hope the wait for a full release doesn’t last much longer.
Fallout VR is in development for the HTC Vive. There’s currently no word on a launch date.
Be sure to check back with iDigitalTimes.com for more Fallout coverage throughout 2016 and however long Bethesda supports the Fallout franchise in the years to come.
Update: There's been a fair amount of discussion about the movement in Fallout VR since we posted our impressions and we felt like we could probably have been a bit clearer about how it works. Teleportation became our primary means of travel during the demo for two reasons. First, the demo area was pretty small, so there wasn't much area to walk around in. It was also a much faster way of getting from Point A to Point B, regardless of whether we're talking about switching cover in a firefight or traveling from Red Rocket to Concord. That said, you can absolutely teleport to an area and then walk around in however large an area is covered by your Vive base station.
