Ubisoft

Ubisoft is one of the biggest games publishers in the world, so its announcement at E3 earlier this year that it was investing in virtual reality was significant -- it made the company one of the first major players to commit to the burgeoning medium.

Fast forward to Gamescom 2015, and we finally got to see what the company has been working on. It's early days, but the results even at this stage bode well for both gameplay and storytelling in future titles. "We are doing prototypes, we are studying gameplay, nausea, and some of the other problems," game director Olivier Palmieri tells WIRED. "We aim to maybe release VR products next year, but for now we're still investigating all the possibilities."


The first of those possibilities is surprising. Rather than strapping an Oculus Rift to our heads and throwing us into an interactive experience, Palmieri first showed us how VR can elevate linear cutscenes. Ubisoft has taken the classic "Definition of Insanity" trailer for 2012's Far Cry 3 and repurposed it for VR. Given it's a game that's already played first person, you might think it would make little difference. You'd be wrong.

The barely contained rage of the game's chief antagonist Vaas is even more potent when he's getting right in your face, and the sense of peril you feel being tied up, on the precipice of a calamitous drop, is near tangible. The scene is subtly changed though. Move your head around to peer at your surroundings, and Vaas' rantings pause, as he impatiently waits for your attention. In the distance, another character is being beaten by Vaas' guards, a sight that's all the more uncomfortable immersed in the world. Finally, the fall as Vaas pushes you off the cliff creates a lurch in your stomach and a spike in your heartrate.

The potential here is huge, and not just for narrative structure in new games going forwards. It opens up the prospect of VR remasters for older titles, a concept that, in retrospect, now seems blindingly obvious.


Switching to a more traditional VR session -- if we can label a technology yet to reach consumers as "traditional" yet -- Palmieri introduced Eagle Flight. You play as a bird (which looked more like a raven, incidentally), first flying around Paris chasing target markers before four players pair off for a form of aerial capture the flag.

Flying is as simple as looking where you want to go, while tilting your head ear-to-shoulder banks you in a sharp turn. That's all you need for the flight game, though a controller is added for capture the flag to fire energy bursts at enemies (it's safe to say that it's not modelled on real eagles/ravens, at least that we know of). Eagle Flight excels with its motion controls and graceful sense of aerial maneouvering, but with the Parisian landscape merely a collection of dark grey models it's clear it's an early product. Still, the rush of swooping down through the streets creates the same kind of head rush as riding a rollercoaster. "If VR [controls] can be more accesssible, like on Eagle Flight, I believe it will be very interesting in the coming years," Palmieri says. "Here, you can perform actions mostly with just the head, and most people can become experts in flying in a few minutes. It's very good to see [projects like this] can get new people into VR."

It's clear that Ubisoft hasn't been experimenting with VR for as long or to the same extent as early adopters have. Far Cry 3 is, after all, a three-year-old game now, and Eagle Flight is the very definition of a demo designed to prove functionality, not show polish. However, what WIRED saw and played here has us very excited to see how these experiments are incorporated into actual games from the publisher in the near future -- and we know Rabbids and TrackMania are among the franchises getting the VR treatment. "We're studying many different subjects, from gameplay to cinematics to narration," Palmieri adds. "There are several Ubisoft teams around the world experimenting with VR. We don't know yet exactly which types of projects we'll be releasing, but we're very interested by VR as a format."