Ricky Church gets hands on with Vader Immortal: A Star Wars VR Story at Star Wars Celebration…
After the Star Wars Celebration panel showcasing the upcoming VR series Vader Immortal, Flickering Myth got the opportunity today to play the demo of the game at the Oculus booth on the showroom floor. After the build-up from the panel and how much the development team put into to not only push the boundaries of VR technology, but to make it feel like Darth Vader was standing directly in front of you, how does it stand up?
The demo doesn’t waste time and jumps you right into it as you’re introduced to Commander Karis, voiced by Star Wars Rebels‘ Steve Blum, in an interrogation room with a dire warning that if you don’t please Vader in the task he has planned for you you won’t be much longer for the world. And then a door opens with a familiar silhouette as Darth Vader steps out and walks right up to you. The VR made Vader pretty impressive with his costume, lights and controls highly detailed. His iconic helmet looks smooth and actually has reflections of the lights and some surroundings over it. He looks pretty great and Scott Lawrence, who voices Yeager in Star Wars Resistance, provides the voice of the Dark Lord in the VR game and makes Vader sound just as menacing as James Earl Jones does, especially given the sound of the Oculus headset.
His mission for you is a seemingly simple yet surprising one: he wants you to open up a Jedi holocron. The VR takes you through the steps to open it, but its fairly straightforward enough as the motions to move it around in your hands and open it translate pretty well in the VR world. Once the holocron is open and Vader is impressed enough to deem you the one he’s been searching for, no time is wasted in getting a tutorial in lightsaber fighting.
Using a lightsaber on the Oculus system is actually fairly well done. The system is able to take into account if you decide to hold the blade with one or both hands as well as which hand you place on the top or bottom of the hilt. The fighting itself seems fairly simple with you can only make standard style slashes, but that’s also to be expected as most people probably cannot do the crazy spins, leaps and swordplay the Jedi can do, much less with an imaginary lightsaber. The Oculus also takes advantage of lightsaber fighting in a way other Star Wars games haven’t before through it being done in VR as you have a 360 degree field to focus on with sounds coming at you all around. You really have to be aware of what is around you the whole time and listen closely for the sounds of the little training spheres and hums of lightsabers.
Through three rounds, you have to battle against the training spheres as well as lightsaber droids in order to pass Vader’s test and survive. While fighting the lightsaber droids, at least these ones, isn’t anything too fancy, battling the training spheres is pretty cool as you can actually block and deflect their blaster bolts back at them in a fairly accurate manner. The rounds get progressively more difficult as multiple spheres and lightsaber droids are utilized against you, making it even more significant to be aware of your surroundings throughout the rounds.
Once the rounds have been completed, the demo was over with Vader promising to harness your skills to obey him. Again, the sheer size and level of detail in Vader was most impressive. The game seems to have taken total advantage of the Oculus system to really immerse players in the world of Star Wars and Vader’s citadel on Mustafar. It will definitely be interesting to see the full VR game, but for now the demo left a pretty positive impression for what it might accomplish.
Ricky Church
Originally published April 14, 2019. Updated April 15, 2019.
