Announced ahead of tomorrow’s Playstation Experience event in San Francisco, it seems sci-fi adventure title Eclipse from developer White Elk is now headed to Sony’s virtual reality platform PlayStation VR, and it looks stunning.
The PlayStation Experience, being held this weekend in San Francisco event is bigger than ever this year. More importantly for us though, it’s set to be another event bursting at the seams with new VR content. So much so, the news has already started filtering in.
White Elk founder Jonathan Hawkins has announced via a guest blog post on PlayStation.com that his studio will be bringing its first built-for-VR title Eclipse to PlayStation VR.
Hawkins describes the title as “a first person exploration game, set on a sentient planet with a dark past,” – a game in which the player finds themselves, awoken after a crash-landing, in a world “littered with the remnants of a failed civilisation.”
The title is built for virtual reality, a phrase we’re happy to be hearing more and more of these days, and seems to be setting itself at a vaguely Myst-like pitch, with an emphasis on exploration and puzzle solving. Donning your advanced space suit, you quicky discover a mysterious supernatural relic, the Artifact, itself constructed of various fragments. Collect the shards, unlock the mysteries behind this ancient civilisation and, with any luck, escape the planet.
Hawkins was impressed with virtual reality’s impressive ability to present a sense of place.
“Right away, the sense of scale in VR grabbed us. We kept pushing on this idea. Filling the world full of giant set pieces and cavernous rooms. Designing traversal mechanics and areas to take advantage of the unique perspective that VR creates.”
“The core idea of the game is that nature is the connection. VR has allowed us to push this idea. The story of the planet is told through its environments and your interactions with its creatures. By virtually teleporting you to this world, VR creates a sense of being there. The textures of the world and the movements through the space become almost real. These feelings combined with Cecil and Section Studios’ amazing artistic abilities has allowed us to tell the story of the planet in VR, through imagery and symbolism, and breath of life into this imaginary place.”
The production design of Eclipse is immensely appealing and speak to that sense of scale alluded to by Hawkins’, an aspect of gameworlds that I personally am really looking forward to being explored by developers in VR.
No launch date for the title as yet, and no indication this title is as yet exclusive to the PlayStation VR platform, having been previously demo’d on Oculus Rift. We’ll keep you up to date with more information as it becomes available. The PlayStation Experience runs this weekend so stay tuned for more PSVR news.
