Skydance's Behemoth Preview - Into the Great Wide Open

As time goes on, the complexity of VR games is ever-changing. Skydance Games is hoping to take further advantage of that particular platform by putting together immersive adventure games such as the upcoming release of Skydance’s Behemoth. Skydance Games is set to bring this project to multiple platforms later this fall, with the goal of building upon melee combat and hand-based physics that was prominent in the VR title The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners.

I recently had some hands and eyes-on time with Skydance’s Behemoth at a preview event held a couple of weeks ago. The demo, presented in PlayStation VR 2, offered a glimpse of what using the grand scale of virtual reality can achieve when married with a story-driven immersive experience.

While I got to control the very start of the preview, which allowed me to select various comfort settings – something that feels like a necessity when it comes to free-roaming VR – the bulk of what I saw was demonstrated to me by Shawn Kittelsen, Vice President of Creative for Skydance’s Behemoth.

The demo begins with the main character, Wren, who has been afflicted by a terrible curse that will be important to the course of the story. Wren, who can effectively be anyone you want because that’s really the point of immersive VR, enters the Forsaken Lands – a kingdom that’s been decimated by an ancient curse, in order to take on the daunting Behemoths.

These monsters are scattered across the land, so they’ll be fighting any manner of enemies along the way in order to restore life to a civilization's past.

From the jump, it’s clear that Skydance’s Behemoth has put forth loads of detail into crafting its fantasy world. Just looking around, it’s easy to see the details in the environment, and the little things you can pick up such as a sword – which will come in handy for taking on various enemies of course – and other items such as healing greens, or items for crafting.

Using these items has an element of real-life application to them. For example, you will be moving your hand to sheath and unsheathe your sword like you would in real life. Or lifting a healing item up to your mouth to imbibe it.

Furthermore, this methodology extends to basic attacks. Blocking involves holding the sword perpendicular to the angle of oncoming attacks, and you can parry by swimming against an oncoming attack like you would if you were holding a real sword, just by using the VR controllers.

In Skydance’s Behemoth, one element that sort of sets it apart from other action games is the addition of a super strength ability. It’s an important one because it allows you to use some fun attacks, like slicing an enemy for a fatality.

The damage against enemies is dynamic too, so you can cut them any way you want. That level of freedom is extended to the world itself as well – there are no invisible walls, and Wren can make use of a grappling hook to get around high places. If you want to jump from high areas, you can do that too.

Crafting comes into play in a more organic way. When you want to craft, there’s a specific station you find, and you put the plants you picked up into a pouch. Said pouch can then be placed on your belt so that you can heal yourself along the way.

There’s a lot to explore in Skydance’s Behemoth, with puzzle rooms that net secret items, as well as other nooks and crannies to discover. There might be secrets in places you never expected to find them in.

With the power of the current generation platforms such as PlayStation 5, atmosphere effects and physics rendering are fleshed out quite well. The PSVR 2 version specifically, is able to approximate PC ultra settings because of the power of the console itself.

At its core, Skydance’s Behemoth is a physics-based game. The physics are real so you can get all sorts of fun effects going like swinging across planks or using the grappling rope.

Throughout the course of the demo, it became clear that it’s important to learn how to adapt to the situations you find yourself in – particularly when engaging in normal enemy encounters.

Toward the end of the demo, we finally saw one of the game’s titular Behemoths, and what a sight it was. Without giving away the plot, there’s a lot of strategy involved in taking one of these things out, and perhaps most importantly, endurance.

A familiar comparison might be something like Shadow of the Colossus, but with you directly getting that first-person experience through VR. That and these Behemoths aren’t on any set pattern – the one in the demo proved to be plenty of challenge just because it wasn’t entirely predictable. Throw some smaller enemies into the mix during the encounter, and it’s quite a task.

All in all, the demo lasted about 30 minutes, and that was by someone who already knew what they were doing. I could have easily played through the same map and spent an hour or more just exploring around if I had had the time.

That said, this little slice of gameplay did give me a grand perspective on what Skydance’s Behemoth is setting out to do. It’s not just some quick, gimmicky attraction to hold your attention for a few minutes at a time. This feels like the real deal – a fully fleshed out, free-roam action adventure that puts key focus on the narrative, and one that isn’t just converting an existing traditional game into VR.

As someone who in the past wasn’t particularly sold on the merits of VR, I can see the appeal here. Singleplayer narrative games hold a special place in my heart as my typical go-to and Skydance’s Behemoth looks to be a magnificent time when it finally releases later this Fall on PlayStation VR 2, PCVR, and Meta Quest 2 and 3.

TechRaptor was invited to an event to preview Skydance's Behemoth by the publisher.