Insomniac Announces ‘The Unspoken’, a Magical Multiplayer Oculus Touch Exclusive

By
Scott Hayden
-
12

Insomniac Games, the studio known for series such as Ratchet & Clank and Spyro the Dragon, today announced an Oculus Touch exclusive that promises to have you throwing fire balls and wielding magic of all sorts. It’s called The Unspoken.

Boasting more than 25 spells and multiple arenas where you can play against friends and strangers, The Unspoken features an urban setting where you face off in magical 1v1 multiplayer combat. You’ll be able to cast spells, summon scary monsters, create helpful golems to do your bidding, draw powerful shields to protect yourself from your enemy’s arcane onslaught, and break your enemy’s shield with magical javelins—and all using the Oculus Touch hand controllers.

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image courtesy Insomniac Games

Insomniac is investing heavily into virtual reality lately, with their yet-to-release Lovecraftian horror Edge of Nowhere releasing June 6th, and the newly announced Feral Rights, a VR adventure brawler that lets you turn into a beast so you can duke it out with other players coming in Fall 2016. Oculus Studios, the company’s production wing, is publishing all three VR games exclusively on the Oculus Store.

The Unspoken is slated to arrive during holiday season of 2016, while Oculus Touch is said to arrive in the second half of 2016.

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Scott Hayden
Well before the first modern XR products hit the market, Scott recognized the potential of the technology and set out to understand and document its growth. He has been professionally reporting on the space for nearly a decade as Editor at Road to VR, authoring more than 4,000 articles on the topic. Scott brings that seasoned insight to his reporting from major industry events across the globe.
  • Pistol Pete

    Exclusive titles are bad for the industry and Oculus looks like a dusche bag for doing them.

    • Mike Coker

      There is no consumer market right now. In order for a developer to mitigate risks, publishing agreements are made. Many times those include exclusivity, which may make people unhappy but the alternative is that these studios sit on the sideline and wait to see if they should bother investing at all. That means no content for the small market that will exist and then the platform suffers (or dies).

      So perhaps people should think about the entire picture before crying foul because a particular piece of software isn’t on the particular platform they purchased. There’s a good chance that when the exclusivity period is up, many of these developers would consider other platforms.

      • Raphael

        Eve Valkyrie was an Octopus title that’s now coming to Vive.

        • popupblocker

          Nothing wrong with initial launch exclusivity. Hopefully they will become cross compatible later.

          • Steve P

            Agreed.

      • Pistol Pete

        I bought both platforms. But I do see your point. Still seems like Oculus is directing people to buy their platform because they have a limitation agreement on their software, not because they have the better platform, as it should be.

    • popupblocker

      Funny that. PlayStation and Xbox haven’t done too badly out of it.

      Also this uses specific oculus touch features – you couldn’t even use a vive controller.

      The main problem is companies are making proprietory tech because they have to. There is nothing else out there. Oculus did release ALL the DK1 specs and code open source – like to see HTC do that. Wonder if that will be a future path to make oculus the leader. Open source it it and allow others to make versions but they all have to use the oculus store…

  • PrymeFactor

    Does seem like hypocrisy that people are carpeting Oculus for making games they fund exclusive, yet see no issue with Valve advertising just the Vive on the defacto PC gaming storefront.

    There’s a business under this, and they’ve got to do what they can to stand out.

    • YzaiCreate

      There’s a difference though. Valve aren’t locking out other people’s hardware. Advertising yourself on your own storefront is one thing, forcing games to be locked to your hardware is another. Not that i’m saying oculus should or shouldn’t be doing this, just pointing out that these are very different actions you’re comparing. As far as I’m aware, almost all the games that valve are actively showing off have stated plans to incorporate Oculus Touch controls once that becomes available.

      • PrymeFactor

        Making games you fund exclusive to your hardware is not exactly unprecedented or a bad thing.

        It really doesn’t matter if Valve is not locking out other hardware. Microsoft wasn’t locking out Chrome and Firefox when the EU made them do the ‘browser ballot’ to give the users choice.

        If you were to carry this thought through, Valve is supposed to be pushing SteamVR as a platform, and thus should be putting adverts for the Rift front and center with the Vive so users can make their own choice.

        It seems tied to user bias to brush off the massive benefit of exclusive advertisement front and center in Steam, yet complain about exclusive games on the Rift.

        • YzaiCreate

          That’s a reasonable position to have, but personally I have never had any problem with windows installing IE on their OS. Fact is, there’s tons of advertisement for all the bigger browsers that i don’t feel it’s necessary for microsoft to put it into their own system.

          Whether that’s anti-competetive or not, I don’t know. I am aware that the browser ballot thing supposedly didn’t really change much at all in terms of who used what.

          And yeah, I’ve already said that oculus funding games and making them exclusive is fine.

          I’m fine with valve putting adverts for their system on their storefront in the same way that i’m fine with microsoft having IE be the default web browser. They’re not forcing you to stick with it and there’s plenty of advertisement to suggest alternatives.

          Facebook, Sony and Samsung have put their own advertisements out there, and as far as I’m aware, people know about those as much as the vive.

          The reason why some people are upset about exclusives whether oculus fund them or not, is that either they don’t want the pool of VR games to be more limited than it already is since there are still so many people who think it’s a big waste of time with no major support, or they simply want to be able to buy the games they like on the system they like. The latter might seem naive, but it is why i’m saying that exclusives are a different thing to advertising, and why to some people, Oculus has a less palatable approach than Valve.

          Advertising yourself and not your competition doesn’t stop people from playing that particular game with the competition’s hardware regardless of how much it may passively try to limit that.
          Locking out other hardware from games is actively limiting the choice for the end user in a market environment where there’s not much choice to begin with.