Supermassive Games’ upcoming VR title, Until Dawn: Rush of Blood, was well into development before Until Dawn became a hit. In an interview with Game Informer, Executive Producer Simon Harris said that although Until Dawn‘s success is a “great starting point” for the VR game, it’ll be a “completely new” experience.
Obviously the success of Until Dawn is a great starting point for Until Dawn: Rush of Blood, but we were well into the development of this as a VR game before we knew exactly how Until Dawn was going to be received. I guess the success has ratified our choices and we hope that players will be excited to play a completely new VR experience in and beyond that world.
We’re also told that it was easier to move Rush of Blood from traditional controls over to VR than it was to move Until Dawn over from PlayStation Move to PS4.
The shift from the initial PlayStation 3 with Move version of Until Dawn to the final PlayStation 4 version was a massive shift in terms of technology, systems and especially content as the game went through a substantial shift in tone. [Rush of Blood] shares the same core game engine and toolset, so it made it easier to bring across a lot of the content such as the locations, characters, etc.
Supermassive learned quite a few lessons from Until Dawn, however, which has aided Rush of Blood‘s development. The developer learned a lot about building tension and fear, and creating moments of shock and horror. “Some of those visual and audio techniques do transfer across, albeit with some adjustment for VR, but on the whole it’s an all-new approach,” said Harris.
One of the most important aspects of creating such an experience is pacing, according to Harris, but with an immersive technology like VR, Supermassive has to be careful with how it delivers the experience.
During our testing we use galvanic response meters to test how players respond to the game as a whole, the build-up, the quiet periods, the suspense, the jump scares and the intense periods of action. This allows us to balance and pace the game better, as well as determining how scary our sequences are.
Until Dawn: Rush of Blood does not have a release date yet, but we’ll update our readers when we have more info. In the meanwhile, for an in-depth write-up of the title’s development, make sure to check out the source link below.
[Source: Game Informer]
