Skydance Games is preparing their next big VR title following the success of The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners, and it’s looking to be a big one. While we had some time to get to know the upcoming Skydance’s Behemoth through an early preview session, we still had some questions.
Sitting down with Skydance Vice President of Creative for Skydance’s Behemoth, Shawn Kittelsen, we were able to get a further grasp on the development of the game with a focus on player experience, and how it’s important to create an immersive and engaging experience through physics-based combat mechanics, player choice, and customization.
As the game has been fairly dormant in the public eye since its announcement, we wanted to know a little more about the history of this project and why the team decided to go ahead with VR versus a traditional kind of action adventure.
“Our original team was looking for pioneering technology, with VR being that in games right now,” said Kittelsen. “The team released The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners, and that has gone on to be one of the best-selling VR games of all time.
“The physics-based melee combat in that game lets you kill walkers, which was something fans responded to in such a way that made us think we had to build on this. So taking this idea, we thought, what if any one human enemy was dangerous? What if they could go toe to toe with you using melee combat?
“That’s how we ended up getting into the advanced mechanics [for Skydance’s Behemoth], and then just bringing in as many weapons as we could like swords, axes, blade knives, and a bow and arrow as a ranged weapon. The grappling hook became a way to manipulate the environment and explore.”
While The Walking Dead was a survival game in a very intimate space, the team at Skydance Games then considered what was the opposite of that – wide open spaces. Specifically in that VR can sell the scale in a way that traditional “flat” games can’t.
“We wanted to go the biggest scale with our world, and the Behemoth encounters are these really exceptional punctuation points along the way of the campaign,” said Kittelsen. “The package comes together with everything you’ve learned in terms of traversal, environmental puzzles, and combat.”
This was all evident in the demo Skydance Games had on display moments before. While it was run through in about 30 minutes, the slice of gameplay could have taken up to an hour for the sheer number of ways it could be approached, and because Skydance’s Behemoth is the type of game where you can pick your play style a little bit.
“You can hang back and play from range, you can get up close, and I imagine there’s going to be some in the player base who go with a shield only so they can block attacks,” explained Kittelsen.
“Or you can grab enemies and engage your strength and shoot them a great distance. So yeah, player choice is important to us. Wren [the player character], is not canonically gendered in any direction, so Wren can be anyone.
“In the final game, you’ll have a choice of voices for your character, a choice between two different sets of arms, and a choice of range of skin tones too so that whoever’s playing, they can be fully immersed in their character.”
The way anyone plays, it’ll ultimately be up to them. Skydance’s Behemoth is effectively a sandbox, and the game environments are a playground.
Attached to these gameplay elements is an immersive story, and while it won’t be as choice driven like the gameplay loop itself is, it is engineered to be like a thrilling rollercoaster ride.
“Everyone will get the same story,” Kittelsen confirmed.
“It’s just sort of how their approach to getting there, and how they upgrade their weaponry. There are different hero weapons you can acquire along the way, and rather than upgrading your character, you’ll upgrade those weapons.
“You’ll have the choice where you put those resources into customizing the different properties and effects that it has when you do different tasks. You’ll also be able to customize the appearance of it.”
There’s a lot to sift through when it comes to Skydance’s Behemoth’s narrative, and there will be a lot of twists and turns along the way, as well as other characters who you’ll meet during the adventure. But just how long will said adventure last?
“It’s about a 12-hour campaign,” said Kittelsen.
“We have frequent save points and it’s divided into chunks, so that if a player only has 20-30 minutes they can go in, have a play session, and make some meaningful progress as they make their way through. Anyone’s welcome to play longer, but realistically most VR players prefer a 30-to-40-minute session."
This design was implemented after the team received feedback from the work on The Walking Dead. That means it’s all manual saves, and while there are auto save points, the big boss battles do have that leeway in the form of checkpoints if you need to go back and puzzle out what to do.
These bosses, or Behemoths as the game’s title calls out, were the result of the team at Skydance Games pushing themselves to do something that could only be done in VR. Of course, you can fight boss battles in traditional flat games, but you can’t get a sense of how big that monster is relative to you.
“You can’t look up and have that feeling of awe and the impossibility of it,” Kittelsen explained.
“The demo boss started out at about half its current size, and we decided to keep scaling it up. All the Behemoths are very different, look different, and the largest one is about the size of a skyscraper.
“All of the fights have distinct phases they go through, but we really want them to feel dynamic so no two are the same.”
Because Skydance's Behemoth is a full-featured game, there will be a number of accessibility options in place because VR has that physical element and everyone has different limitations, including the possibility of feeling motion sickness.
“You saw some of the features – there’s the comfort vignette, which you can dial in to help tunneling so that your periphery can help drive motion sickness,” said Kittelsen.
“The snap turn versus smooth turn setting is another powerful feature. There’s also a color blindness feature, and ultimately you’ll be able to play sitting or standing. This is something that was actually really hard to tune for because you can imagine things like the belt and picking things up.”
In an effort to get as many people as possible to play a game like Skydance’s Behemoth, these type of options are key. The team wants to make games for everyone, which is why it’s coming out on every VR system, and the goal is to attract people to VR in general.
With VR still in a sort of niche space, Skydance’s Behemoth looks to be a huge step up in terms of what developers can actually do with the VR platform. Skydance’s Behemoth will be available for PlayStation VR 2, PCVR, as well as Meta Quest 2 and 3 this fall.
TechRaptor was invited to preview Skydance's Behemoth by the publisher.
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