Owners of the Oculus Rift won’t be able to find plumber-sorority girl romances next to Frozen tie-ins in the device’s app store, but they may be able to indulge in the Rift’s original promise straight away – a truly immersive visual experience, and not in the sense of the corporate boilerplate hauled out whenever a studio CEO finds himself on a platform with nothing else to talk about but the lobster bisque he had last night. That’s what the corporate boilerplate for Robinson: The Journey is saying, anyway. A freshly announced IP from Crytek, Robinson: The Journey will be a full virtual reality experience merging your perspective with the survivor of a space-age shipwreck, a young boy marooned on an unknown planet. Crytek Director of Production David Bowman cast platitudes upon the waters:
Ever since Crytek was founded, we have been striving to build the most realistic, believable worlds we possibly can for players. Today's VR technologies are enabling us to bring together CRYENGINE's capabilities and our legacy in creating immersive gaming experiences like never before. The time we're spending in Robinson: The Journey as we develop it is transforming the way we think about games, and we can't wait until everyone has the chance to set foot in this universe for themselves.
Between the omission of the Oculus Rift’s name and the strenuously vague language, there isn’t a lot to go on here. (The pterosaurs excepted - if you're thinking what I'm thinking, let's hope they do this sort of thing better than After Earth!) However, the promise of Robinson: The Journey is in the visual domain, and in that respect Crytek has a record better than anyone in the business. After all, this is the studio that developed a game so ambitious that the best PC rigs at the time of its release simply could not handle it at maximum graphics. The chances are more than good that this effort, like Crysis, will push the envelope of its environment.
Robinson: The Journey is in the infancy of its PR campaign at this moment. Nevertheless, for those interested, there is already a website, Twitter, and Instagram for the title. One thing is certain: those hulks of metal ruins in the background aren’t for nothing.
Did you like what Crysis did for photorealism? You might want to gird your loins.