Insomniac Talks Open World Adventure ‘Stormland’, Catch the Trailer Here

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Insomniac teased its next VR game recently, a then unnamed open world adventure that promised to let you “go wherever you want.” After revealing the game just prior to E3, dubbed Stormland, the studio just released a few choice bits of info on the game at the PC Gaming Show at E3 2018.

Update (06/11/18): Insomniac’s CCO Chad Dezern took the stage today at the PC Gaming Show to reveal a little more about to ‘Stormland’. On stage, Dezern talked a bit about locomotion, saying you can fly just above the cloud-like “slipstream” using your hands and shoot a laser in the cloud’s surface to create a sort of ramp to glide off of. You can also physically climb up a cliff side and glide back down. “It’s a set of mechanics that are designed to work together fluidly so that movement feels exhilarating,” Dezern said. Outside of climbing, it appears much of the locomotion is based on gliding.

Dezern also revealed that you can scavenge technology and integrate it into your arms, giving you abilities such as harnessing electricity, or cloaking.

The entity called ‘The Tempest’ is said to “rearrange everything every single week,” presenting the player with new playgrounds of movement, combat, and scavenging.

The original article follows below:

Original article (06/07/018): In Stormland, Oculus says in a blogpost, you play as a peaceful gardener until a mysterious storm called ‘The Tempest’ shatters your android body. After lying dormant for centuries, you must journey through an ever-changing cloudscape, augmenting yourself to become a heroic fighter, save your friends, and reclaim your world.

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Image courtesy Insomniac Games

“In the game, you can explore an expansive environment with complete freedom—bound up cliffs, glide across chasms, and fly through the slipstream at near-terminal velocity. Then detonate explosives, harness electricity, and wield makeshift weapons to overcome titanium sentries and monolithic guardians. Play through a dramatic single-player campaign, or explore forgotten ruins with friends,” the company says.

Image courtesy Insomniac Games

There’s no precise release date yet, although the company says it should be out sometime in 2019. Like many of Insomniac’s past VR projects, which include Rift exclusives The Unspoken (2017), Edge of Nowhere (2016) and Feral Rites (2016), we suspect Insomniac’s relationship points to another Rift exclusive in the works.

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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.
  • brubble

    =D

  • impurekind

    Man, Oculus is knocking it out the park with this, Virtual Virtual Reality, Echo Combat and Quill all highlighted in the last few days and Defector also shown recently too.

    • Tarisis

      I am not cool with all these exclusives dividing the PC VR space. It’s funny how Oculus owners crow about all of the exclusives, but when their headset doesn’t work with certain SteamVR games, they go ballistic on the Steam forums.

      It’s understandable too. Not being able to play a PC VR game because you have the ‘wrong’ HMD is effed up.

      • impurekind

        It’s like you people seriously don’t understand the difference between a game that’s actually directly funded by a company and a game where a company has simply paid a developer a wad of cash to make it exclusive. Pretty much every that is an Oculus exclusive has been funded directly by Oculus, so they effectively become first/second party titles. Suggesting it’s wrong for Oculus to put its own games exclusively on its own platform would be as dumb as saying its wrong for Nintendo to Mario on its consoles only, or, if we’re being a bit more tit for tat, that it was wrong for Nintendo to make Bayonetta exclusive even though it was Nintendo that funded the game’s development in the first place. You people sometimes don’t really know what you’re talking about. And that goes to the other point you made about people getting annoyed with Steam VR games don’t work properly on Rift or don’t even come to Rift–that is an annoying and pointless limitation for no good reason.

        • JJ

          what do you mean you people!? jk

          but no we understand clearly whats going on, thanks for the explanation though. its not a hard concept to grasp we just do not agree with their decision to pursue this monetary gain at the cost of fans.

          Plus most people are angered because oculus hasn’t made any money and are just using facebooks deep pockets to buy up as many studios and games as possible. So just because they have zuck money, they win regardless of the quality of their headset. I don’t have a problem with the oculus hmd as a device, but i do have a problem with them using facebooks money to corner the market and create a monopoly so that it doesn’t matter if their next headset is good its gona be our only option.

          It’s just a cheap way to win this battle, using facebooks money.

          And we all want to play all the games, so its personal when they exclude fans from the experience.

  • SandmaN

    “Thanks” Oculus for making yet another EXCLUSIVE game.

    All this company is doing is further fragmenting the already small high-end VR market by releasing all of these ‘Oculus Exclusive’ games….. and they wonder why high-end VR is having such a slow adoption rate. Oculus is a major part of the problem with all of their exclusive games residing in their walled garden.

    Disclaimer: I own both Rift and Vive and enjoy them both.

    • nejihiashi88

      well everyone has to work hard, so oculus to support the developers with money and hard work only then to make the game available to vive with zero work and money from htc.

      • SandmaN

        All I’m saying is make it for sale on Steam as well, even if it’s just a timed exclusive that would work. Everyone still gets paid and think about this: 1) they would more than double what they were already making through sales, 2) It would increase the player base substantially as there would be more people online to play with, providing they implement cross-platform, 3) Profit.

        Making purely exclusive games locked to one headset ecosystem (ReVive notwithstanding) just hurts and further fragments the current and future VR markets and entire VR ecosystem as a whole.

        Still hoping that Oculus will eventually take their claws out of The Unspoken and Echo Arena (among a number of others) and let those developers open the door to develop their games for Vive/WMR/Steam as well. Sharing is caring.

        • Andrew Jakobs

          Who says it isn’t a timed exclusive? nobody mentioned that it isn’t (nor that it is).. And as far as I know, these days you can use the vive with a plugin and play oculus games.

          • SandmaN

            True, it’s a ways out still, but most likely will be an Oculus exclusive as they’re partnered directly with Oculus Studios.
            Also, I mentioned ReVive above. It’s not the best way to play games as you have to have a decent amount of technical knowledge and understanding as well as vast amounts of patience – lots of bugs with it and it’s not officially supported. It works, for the most part, but it’s definitely not good for the masses.

          • cartweet

            Revive has gone through so many release and it’s really not that hard to use and very customizable. As for bugs the dev is very responsive and quick at fixing them.

          • Oculus Studio games are always exclusive, Don’t kid yourself…

          • Andrew Jakobs

            Well, it’s an insomniac game, but I guess it’s presented as an Oculus studio game.. Ahwel, can’t be bothered if it’s exclusive.. there are still a lot of games that are exclusive to the vive (at least it’s controls are vive only (optimized)).

          • I for one love that if u wanted oculus game u should have gotten a rift. if I wanted to play fallout4 or doom vfr I would have gotten a vive haven’t exclusives is a good thing. I never understood the big deal. it just seem like vive owners. day dream owners r not in here crying over gear games they r not playing.

          • Well, pay $800 to play Vive games and another $600 for Rift games 2 years ago.

            $500/$400 now and all this on top of the required PC.

            And you people wonder why all the complaints and ReVive :3

            Especially after the Rift pricing outrage.

            But you can afford both w/ lots of money to waste though

            At least cosoles are $300 each.

          • I paid $500 for my Xbox one and $150 for my elite controller. If the ps4 had games i want to play I would buy that too instead i bought a rift the touch controllers and built a pc. Far from rich i just saved if u want something u find a way

        • Darshan

          Yep once substantial profit earned by oculus and almost all of their funding refilled, then oculus might release exclusive games in wild for betterment of VRkind.

          Unless VR Games Stuido have enough money to develop on their own or they get very big publishers interested in VR i don’t think AAA quality is possible in VR

          Its bitter truth that VR gamers need to accept.

      • just as a heads up htc doesn’t make any money on the games on vive value does htc just hardware money

      • When have they make game available to Vive?

    • Andrew Jakobs

      yeah right, if the few exclusive games is really a problem for ‘a slow aption rate’. I do agree they should support the Vive with their platform, it’s not like they would loose money if they did.. But I do understand why they want to have their own store, it’s not like valve isn’t making money on their store..

      • Darshan

        Oculus does exclusive to make their hardware more compelling when VR Gamer makes buying decision

        Why still no GOD OF WAR on XBOX, Why there will never be any ZELDA on PS2/PS3/PS4

        For any media consumption device Its software that defines the hardware. Lets make VR Studio Reach by every VR Gamer Donating 1USD every month to their favorite VR Game studio, so that they can churn out Platform Independent games. We have to understand hard ground realities of getting funding and than getting them on easy terms also facing consequences when game did not worked out and you have already put all your funding in making AAA VR game.

        Just think over it, you will understand why these platform locked things happening and will happen in future too.

    • cartweet

      If it was mostly or fully funded by oculus very little chance in that. Why would they fund this game only for it’s competitor to gain a 30% cut in software sales for doing absolutely nothing?

      As for slow adoption rate. This isn’t why. The price and pc barrier are the reasons why. Oculus is actually helping to create games that wouldn’t otherwise exist in this market. VR would be even more dead without games like Robo Recall and Lone Echo.

      • J.C.

        I don’t understand what Oculus’ end game is. It’s clearly not to make money on the headsets, so it has to be the software, yeah? So why wouldn’t they have support for as many headsets as possible?

        I don’t care if they want to make their store exclusive, I’d happily support them if they’d support ME. But I’m not about to hand them money for something I have to use a third party hack to run.

        So, in the end, what it means is: this game looks cool but clearly they don’t want me to buy it.

        • Roger Bentley

          man shut the fuck up and go buy a oculus and stop bringing up a three year old argument every time oculus shows off a new game wtf i bet you were the same ass hat that bragged when you heard Doom vfr only supported vive and fallout vr as well. at this point oculus is so cheap no one has a excuse not to have one.

          • Rather jus use the bloody hack :)

          • Darshan

            Hack as you termed is Hack only… Can’t give experience matching to native app for so many reasons. Just consider horrors of controller maping..

          • Darshan

            Thats very ruff way of speaking truth…;-))

            Yep if one want platform exclusive game, go and buy platform what are they waiting for.

        • cartweet

          It’s not as easy or as simple as you think. They will not just add an openvr layer just to add vive support which would also become a support nightmare. Had they done this at the start it would have basically made openvr (which isn’t open) the default vr standard because of valve’s monopoly in pc gaming. Instead they were waiting for OpenXR which will be an open vr standard not controlled by one company. This is the path they’ve chosen to wait for and the best path imo. When OpenXR is implemented in steam and oculus ovr and openvr will both be deprecated.

      • Darshan

        Agree with you … For platform independent game we need Big Studios Publishers with lot of their own money and risk appetite.

        Why oculus will donate their own money in return of nothing… No one does that … Not even so called WHO, WORLD BANK

    • AndyP

      Seem to recall we’ve all had this discussion before, time and again.

      • Roger Bentley

        indeed they will bring up the argument every time there is a oculus exclusive smh sad so sad.

    • Lucidfeuer

      FFS haven’t people still heard about ReVive? I agree that exclusivity on PC is kind of stupid and impractical for users but from a platform standpoint they have every reasons to curate highly quality exclusives, this is what makes Playstation’s success and Nintendo survive…

    • Darshan

      Sorry, i believe Oculus does what it need to do to make their platform first choice for VR Gamers. Its Software which define the hardware. Aren’t gamers buying PS4 for God of War or XBOX for Gears of War or Nintendo Switch for Zelda breath of wild.

      What if they closed backdoor and sealed for REVIVE,they did not as they know even if someone use REVIVE will not get same level of polish experience or frame-rate or native support, yet to give taste of game to a gamer is good idea via REVIVE.

      As long as no giant capital VR Producers and Publishers come to VR market, Its very difficult for any game studio to produce AAA grade VR game from their own money and then publish them to all platform.

      Till such time come, Hardware Exclusives are here to stay…

  • Andrew Jakobs

    Looks great.

  • MatBrady

    So, you’re Wall-E with a body. Cool! I like how you get to upgrade your limbs. You can see the fully upgraded Bod-E just near the end before it zooms into its eye.

    It looks like you’re a botanical research droid on an alien planet, most likely attacked by a rival company who are interested in plundering the planet of resources instead, the bastards. (As evidenced by the explosive orange tubes that these droids are protecting).

    Insomniac are doing a lot of things right in this game, and the fact it has locomotion is a good thing, but why they made it exclusive leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Valve’s games will be open platform. I don’t like how Valve snubbed their HL fans and fell into a Steam-y decadence for way too many years, but at least the decision not to do exclusives shows integrity. Insomniac Games needs to rethink their Faustian bargain with Oculus.

    • Darshan

      Funding from hardware manufacturer always comes with strings attached. Had there been other way to get funding with easy terms they would have taken and in such case they would have produced something for all platform.

      All should be happy that something of such quality is being produced in VR and over period of time once contract end it will be available to every one.

      We have bright example of sony funded “MOSS”

      • ShiftyInc

        They did not fund MOSS. The game was almost done and Sony just picked it up for exclusivity.

  • PJ

    Looks brilliant

  • Andrew McEvoy

    Wow..that looks decent.

  • Roger Bentley

    Oculus delivers another one Damnnn they cant go wrong

    • JJ

      you mean Insomniac.. Oculus didnt do anything other than use zucks deep pockets to buy the game. but your attitude of they cant go wrong explains everything about what you think about oculus….

  • Dorothy Jean Thompson

    F exclusives. I have a rift, don’t get me wrong, I just use the VIVE. The hubby uses the Rift. Ya know, for sit down games…

    • Darshan

      its all game of money, if X hardware maker gives money to make something sure they want title to be exclusive to their platform.

      In the end its software that defines hardware …. Why no one crying for Zelda Breath of Wild not released on PC or PS4 or for that matter XBOX ONE

  • Bartholomew

    This Oculus Rift exclusive is a masterpiece and Valve fanboys (the worst fanboys) are crying.

    • Darshan

      Rift Exclusive must be for period only.. So Valve fan boys may harbor some patience. or they can get some “Revive” alas oculus decide to shut the back door too.

  • Johan Pruijs

    WOW!!!

  • Dan

    I’m not a fanboy (to set it straight fro the start). I own a Vive and don’t own an Oculus (so of course I’d love to see a native Vive version but I know it’s not happening).
    This looks like a fun game and I look forward to trying it out if it turns out to be as good as it sounds. I personally wish that I wouldn’t need Revive as it has its little quirks and games sometimes don’t feel quite right due to control differences, but I’m happy it exists because there are some great titles which are Oculus only. Robo Recall and Lone Echo are the only two exclusives which I have played and they are amazing fun.

    I do understand the frustrations people feel and it’s unfortunate that they come off so mean, negative, “complainy”, etc because it really helps nobody (beyond giving fodder to each side to toss out insults at each other). So, here’s hoping that this and the other great looking exclusives work well in Revive!

  • Lucidfeuer

    This looks great but I’m torn about the design: I don’t like the new logo, and the artistic direction looks bland and unoriginal like most other sci-fi games, which is not really what Insomniac made me used to…

    Otherwise, Oculus didn’t do much to make their library and app better (more transparent and practical in terms of UX and information), but damn they know how to curate and produce games unlike Valve…

  • HybridEnergy

    Very cool trailer and vibe from the music and feel. Can’t wait to see this release.