Rockstar Starts Production on AAA Open-world VR Title

It’s Rockstar, it’ll take years. They’ve been coasting on the last GTA for 7 years now, and 14 years passed between Red Dead 1 and 2. Even just porting an already completed VR mini-game in LA Noire: The VR Case Files from PC to PSVR they took 2 years. If they’re porting a fully-realized VR version of one of their AAA titles it’ll take a couple years, and if they’re building something from the ground up it’ll come nearer the end of the next console cycle. These folks do not move quickly.

Lol I was thinking of Red Dead Revolver which did come out in 2004, but even the gap between Redemption 1 & 2 is still 8 years. These guys really don’t move fast. The studio doing the port works exclusively for Rockstar so I feel they’re more of a 2nd party, like Rare and Nintendo used to be. They’re essentially a Rockstar branch – and given they took two years just to port their previous mini-game from PC to PSVR, I also think it’s safe to say they’ve been thoroughly indoctrinated by Rockstar’s lackadaisical culture.

An L.A. Noire VR complete edition would be fine by me, although I would prefer RDR2 since I haven’t played it yet. I think that would be the smartest move on their part as well since it’s the freshest release with the biggest sales numbers to capitalize on when re-releasing next gen. That or putting them in charge of bolting VR to whatever/whenever their next GTA is.

I agree RDR2 would likely be the most difficult to port, but mostly because of it’s scope and more detailed graphics to optimize for VR. Developing control schemes is relatively simple in comparison, at least in terms of workload, and there are plenty of existing VR games where dual-wielding is a mechanic to draw from. It’s not really a make-or-break feature either, if they decide to go the Half-Life: Alyx route. It would almost certainly be the most lucrative opportunity for a VR port from their library though, so that’s a pretty strong vote in its favor either way.

They already “dipped their feet” into VR development with L.A. Noire, that was the whole point. Now they have a VR studio integrated with their work flow. The difference between porting GTA or RDR is minimal. I think you’re overestimating the difficulties. Amateurs have done passable VR ports in their spare time. An entire studio dedicated to the task is entirely capable. There are plenty of comparable AAA examples already: Skyrim, No Man’s Sky, Fallout 4, and Borderlands are all large open world games with successful VR ports. And of course you have many other types of AAA ports like Star Wars: Squadrons, Minecraft, Resident Evil 7 and big ground-up games like Half-Life: Alyx, Astro Bot, and Asgard’s Wrath. By the time PSVR 2 launches the VR market will be quite mature. When the amount of effort needed to port GTA vs RDR is negligible, while the reward for RDR is much greater, it just seems to point in that direction. Who knows, companies make what I would consider mistakes all the time too, and sometimes they’re even right.

Fair points. It’ll be interesting to see which way they choose. I also have zero interest in GTA V but am looking forward to RDR2 at some point in VR or otherwise so I’m sure that color’s some hope into my opinion lol.

In general, I think we disagree on the relative difficulty of either port though. Both Skyrim and Fallout 4 were ported relatively quickly with full controller support. Compared to full game development it really only takes a small team a short amount of time to add decent VR support. Mostly it’s just playing around with the feel of things, nothing on the scale of building a game engine, coding AI, art pipelines, composing scores, bug testing, etc. that we see for the core game. They’re really just layering some control and UI elements on top of the existing package. The amount of work there doesn’t really change much for either title. Performance optimization would likely take a bit longer for a more modern, performance intensive game like RDR2 of course.

You have convinced me that it’s certainly possible Rockstar would choose the route of GTA first though, despite the fact I personally think it’s the wrong choice I can see the reasoning and can certainly imagine them seeing things that way as well. I believe it would be more wise for them to strike while the iron is hot however, and go with a game that hasn’t already been spread across two console generations. RDR2 still looks like a cutting edge game, and hasn’t worn out much of it’s welcome with multiple releases already. Save a VR GTA experience for GTA VI and just let GTA V go already it’s been 8 damn years lol.

Cheers – I consider any conversation that affords me the experience of changing my mind a success! Although, as a close second I’ll take changing someone else’s mind, I suppose the ideal situation would be something learned on both sides. I’m sure people would still purchase GTAVR, it just wouldn’t be near the “event” of a RDRVR at this point. Actually, to that I guess they could re-release the original RDR and it would seem like a bigger event release than yet another GTA V port.

I agree that the biggest overall hurdle is nailing VR controls, and no one has quite managed it yet. I think the interactions have become decent though, and with the release of PSVR 2.0 the limiting factor of lowest common there will finally be removed from the development cycle in PSVR 1.0; I think that’s a big part of the reason for lack of full VR controls still, too many people still have older hardware. A full second generation cycle should finally address that.

The bigger problem I see is movement controls. Once good 6DOF controllers and headsets are widely available at mass market pricing, that will still be a huge problem to be solved. I really can’t see a critical mass of consumers adopting VR treadmills as a standard. What I’d like to see is something like Ascend VR, where the players own bodily movement through 3D space determines the direction and speed beyond 1-to-1 movement. I’m excited to see how that’s received, and how further development iterates if it proves successful.

Cool – Disqus and Reddit are pretty much the only social media I use with any regularity, sometimes Twitter. I’m currently DJ-Dowism on reddit and @DJDowism on Twitter. I’m looking to get on Soundcloud soon and might be changing names tho lol but if you’re interested I can update then.

Both RDR2 and GTAV have sold an incredible number of copies, somewhere around 15 million per year each since release. It seems like we’re coming down to personal biases on which we’d rather play ourselves in VR, you’d rather play GTAV and I’d rather play RDR2. Really, it seems like both would sell a ton of copies either way and in the end it would be great to see both released in VR anyway so I guess it really doesn’t matter. They should be applying much of the same lessons on VR controls and UI to both games and any subsequent releases so the only thing we can say with any certainty is that they’ll likely keep getting better at it as they go. So, maybe I should hope they release GTAV first ;)

In my personal experience I’m a bit mixed on current movement controls, but I have certainly felt some motion sickness in FPS games using the thumbstick to move, and I think there is a decent percentage of players in the same boat. I also tend to think it’s more immersive and intuitive when your own body motions are being reflected in the game. Ascend VR seems promising to me as a solution, but I’d like to try Golem on PSVR which has some similar adjustments. Options for different players is probably the best bet. If you just want to sink into the couch and thumbstick doesn’t give you motion sickness that’s probably great for lots of situations – especially if you’re wanting to relax lol. Myself I do fell more engaged being physically active in the game world, generally at least.

Lol no need to go all Kratos on some poor unsuspecting deities. I’m just more private/antisocial than some I guess, and never been drawn to most social media. Same would likely go for my enjoyment of RDR2 vs GTAV as well, I really don’t get much out of multiplayer I only play games for the single player story mode, so most of the post-launch support for GTA V just doesn’t interest me. I do really like the way a game like Witcher 3 was supported though, with multiple huge story campaigns added. Actually, that’s a game I’d love to see in VR too. Their follow up Cyberpunk 2077 as well, a least once the kinks are worked out in a few years I’d imagine there will be quite a few campaign add-ons by then.

Maybe by the time I get a PS5 they’ll have at least worked out the kinks in the 2D version on CP2077…

Huh, just looked and couldn’t see anything. What’s up?

We were both wrong, it seems.

As sweet as RDR1 VR would be, I think they’re more used to San Andreas.