With the Oculus Rift set to arrive early next year along with both Valve and Sony’s own VR headsets, virtual reality will be in the hands of the public to decide whether it is a the next big thing in games or this generation’s motion control. No matter how you feel about VR in the long term, it is giving developers a new tool to tell some great stories. Or even re-tell a few… like Star Wars!
Rob McLellan — director of the short film, ABE — shared a new virtual reality project that he is working on, titled Star Wars VR. Yes, that’s right: a fan-made Star Wars game in virtual reality made with the Unreal 4 engine. Now, this is just a proof of concept trailer. Though, the team at Hammerhead VR plans to have the game available around the time of the Rift’s release early next year.
Here is the trailer for Star Wars VR:
My immediate reaction to this trailer was the memory of playing the Atari Star Wars arcade rail-shooter for the first time when I was a kid. I feel like this game could very well be the modern re-imagining of that game, though I expect it will not be on rails. As a fan of Star Wars and one who thinks VR to be a great new method to tell stories, this may be the Star Wars game that we’ve been waiting for. Plus, isn’t the idea of controlling a lightsaber or piloting an X-Wing to destroy the Death Star in virtual reality giving you goosebumps?
It is worth noting that Lucasfilm and Industrial Light & Magic’s ILM Experience Lab (ILMxLAB) are currently experimenting with VR in-house, but did you see the trailer for Hammerhead VR’s Star Wars game? In the words of known Star Wars geek, Liz Lemon:
